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ESSAYS    FROM    THE 
"GUARDIAN." 


400  copies  of  this  book  hai'e 
been  printed  on  Van  Gelder 
hand-made  paper  and  the  type 
distributed. 


ESSAYS    FROM    THE 
-GUARDIAN"    BY 
WALTER    PATER 


PRINTED  FOR  THOMAS  B.  MOSHER  AND 
PUBLISHED  BY  HIM  AT  45  EXCHANGE 
STREET  PORTLAND  MAINE  MDCCCXCVII 


Collegfe 
Library 

PR 

511 
NOTE.        ''^^^^  ■^' 

N  reprinting  Walter  Pater's  con- 
tributions to  T/ie  Guardian  it 
had  been  well,  one  may  not  un- 
reasonably suppose,  to  have  assumed  that 
the  American  reader  would  feel  an  inter- 
est in  possessing  these  nine  anonymous 
essays.  To  limit  the  impression  to  one 
hundred  copies,  and  those  not  for  sale, 
simply  resulted  in  placing  the  book  out  of 
ordinary  reach,  unless  reissued,  as  it  now 
is,  in  an  edition  sufficiently  large  to  make 
it  no  longer  introuvahle. 

The  privately  printed  volume  was  beau- 
tifully done  at  The  Chiswick  Press.  Our 
reprint,  short  of  absolute  photographic 
reproduction,  is  in  facsimile,  as  far  as  type, 
paper    and    binding    can    make   it.      The 


vi  Note. 

portrait  is  from  the  lithograph  by  Rothen- 
stein,  and  is  here  given  for  the  first  time. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  a  bibliography 
of  Pater's  works,  but  in  a  very  full  review 
of  these  Essays,  {The  Athenceum,  June  12, 
1897),  eleven  uncollected  articles  are  cited 
by  the  reviewer  ;  and  it  is  quite  possible 
that  the  list,  which  we  append,  will  admit 
of  future  additions. 

1.  '  The  Complete  Poetical  Works  of 
William  Wordsworth  '  edited  by  J.  Mor- 
ley.  {Athenceum,  January  26,  1889.) 
Signed. 

2.  '  Correspondance  de  Gustave  Flau- 
bert.' (Deuxieme  Se'rie,  1850-1854.) 
{Athenceum^  August  3,  1889.)      Signed. 

3.  J.  A.  Symonds's  '  Renaissance  in 
Italy  :  The  Age  of  the  Despots.'  {Acad- 
emy, July  31,  1875.)      Signed. 

4.  M.  Jules  Lemaitre's  '  Serenus,  and 
other  Tales.'  {Ma  c  mil  I  an' s  Magazine, 
November,  1887.)     Unsigned. 

5.  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Flaubert. 
{Pall  Mall  Gazette,  August  25,  1888.) 
Signed. 


Note.  vii 

6.  Fabre's  'Toussaint  Galabru  '  {Nine- 
teeth  Century^  April,  1889.)     Signed. 

7.  Lilly's  '  Century  of  Revolution.' 
{Nineteenth  Century^  December,  1889.) 
Signed. 

8.  A  Poet  with  something  to  say  : 
Mr.  Arthur  Symons's  '  Days  and  Nights.' 
{Pall  Mall  Gazette,  March  23,  1889.) 
Unsigned. 

9.  '  It  is  Thyself.'  {Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
April  15,  1889.)     Unsigned. 

10.  '  Dorian  Gray.'  {Bookman,^OYerci- 
ber,  1891.)     Signed. 

11.  Mr.  George  Moore  as  an  Art 
Critic.  {Daily  Chronicle,  June  10,  1893.) 
Signed. 

To  the    foregoing  contributions  should 
be  added  :  — 

12.  Introduction  to  'The  Purgatory  of 
Dante  Alighieri  by  C.  L.  Shadwell.  (Pur- 
gatorio  I  —  XXVII.)  '  London,  1892. 
Signed. 


ESSAYS 


'</^I  T   A   m-M   A   NTV 


THE  "GUARDIAN 


WALTER    PATER 

LATE  FELLOW  OF  BRAZENOSE  COLLEGE 


LONDON 

PRINTED  FOR  PRIVATE  CIRCULATION 
AT   THE   CHISWICK  PRESS 

1896 


PREFACE. 

T  has  been  discovered,  through 
the  kindness  of  the  present  editor 
of  the  "Guardian,"  Mr.  D.  C. 
Lathbury,  that  Walter  Pater  contributed 
to  the  pages  of  that  newspaper  nine  anony- 
mous articles.  So  distinguished  an  interest 
attaches  to  everything  which  proceeded 
from  the  fastidious  pen  of  the  great  critic 
that  it  has  been  thought  worth  while  to 
preserve  these  nine  essays,  although  their 
positive  value  may  be  slight.  They  are 
crumbs  from  the  table  of  his  delicate  and 
never  copious  feast,  and  it  is  to  the  inner 
circle  of  his  friends  that  they  are  here 
offered. 


xii  Preface. 

The  sisters  of  Mr.  Pater  have  courteously 
expressed  their  approval  of  the  present 
reprint,  and,  in  doing  so,  have  remarked 
that  it  is  not  their  present  intention  to 
add  any  portion  of  it  to  their  brother's 
published  works. 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

1.  English  Literature i 

2.  Amiel's  "  Journal  Intime  "      ...  19 

3.  Browning 43 

4.  "  Robert  Elsmfre  " 57 

5.  "  Their  Majesties'  Servants"     .     .  77 

6.  Wordsworth 97 

7.  Ferdinand  Fabre 115 

8.  The"Contes"of  M.  Augus  tin  Filon  133 

9.  Mr.  Gosse's  Poems 149 


*^^, 'fS-.-<J^y^ 


I. 

ENGLISH   LITERATURE. 

February  17TH,  1886. 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Four    Books    for    Students    of 
English  Literature. 

PIE  making  of  an  anthology  of 
English  prose  is  what  must  have 
occurred  to  many  of  its  students, 
by  way  of  pleasure  to  themselves,or  of  profit 
to  other  persons.  Such  an  anthology,  the 
compass  and  variety  of  our  prose  literature 
being  considered,  might  well  follow  exclu- 
sively some  special  line  of  interest  in  it ; 
exhibiting,  for  instance,  what  is  so  obviously 
striking,its  imaginative  power,  or  its  (legiti- 
mately) poetic  beauty,  or  again,  its  philoso- 
phical capacity.  Mr.  Saintsbury's  well-con- 
sidered "  Specimens  of  English  Prose  Style, 
from  Malory  to  Macaulay  "  (Kegan  Paul),  a 


4  Essays  from 

volume,  as  we  think,  which  bears  fresh 
witness  to  the  truth  of  the  old  remark  that 
it  takes  a  scholar  indeed  to  make  a  good 
literary  selection,  has  its  motive  sufficiently 
indicated  in  the  very  original  "  introductory 
essay,"  which  might  well  stand,  along  with 
the  best  of  these  extracts  from  a  hundred 
or  more  deceased  masters  of  English,  as 
itself  a  document  or  standard,  in  the  matter 
of  prose  style.  The  essential  difference 
between  poetry  and  prose — "  that  other 
beauty  of  prose" — in  the  words  of  the 
motto  he  has  chosen  from  Dryden,  the 
first  master  of  the  sort  of  prose  he  prefers  : 
— that  is  Mr.  Saintsbury's  burden.  It  is  a 
consideration,  undoubtedly,  of  great  import- 
ance both  for  the  writer  and  the  critic  ;  in 
England  especially,  where,  although,  (as 
Mr.  Saintsbury  rightly  points  out,  in 
correction  of  an  imperfectly  informed 
French  critic  of  our  literature,)  the  radical 
distinction  between  poetry  and  prose  has 
ever  been  recognized  by  its  students,  yet  the 
imaginative  impulse,  which  is  perhaps  the 
richest  of  our  purely  intellectual  gifts,  has 


the  "  Guardian."  5 

been  apt  to  invade  the  province  of  that 
tact  and  good  judgment,  alike  as  to  matter 
and  manner,  in  which  we  are  not  richer 
than  other  people.  Great  poetry  and  great 
prose,  it  might  be  found,  have  most  of  their 
qualities  in  common.  But  their  indispens- 
able qualities  are  different,or  even  opposed  ; 
and  it  is  just  the  indispensable  qualities  of 
prose  and  poetry  resj)ectively,  which  it  is 
so  necessary  for  those  who  have  to  do  with 
either  to  bear  ever  in  mind.  Order.precision, 
directness,  are  the  radical  merits  of  prose 
thought ;  and  it  is  more  than  merely 
legitimate  that  they  should  form  the 
criterion  of  prose  style,  because  within  the 
scope  of  those  qualities,  according  to  Mr. 
Saintsbury,  there  is  more  than  just  the 
quiet,  unpretending  usefulness  of  the  bare 
sertno pedestris.  Acting  on  language,  those 
qualities  generate  a  specific  and  unique 
beauty  —  "that  other  beauty  of  prose"  — 
fitly  illustrated  by  these  specimens,  which 
the  reader  needs  hardly  be  told,  after  what 
has  been  now  said,  are  far  from  being  a 
collection  of  "purple  patches." 


6  Essays  from 

Whether  or  not  he  admits  their  practical 
cogency,  an  attentive  reader  will  not  fail  to 
be  interested  in  the  attempt  Mr.  Saintsbury 
has  made  to  give  technical  rules  of  metre 
forthe  production  of  the  true  prose  rhythm. 
Any  one  who  cares  to  do  so  might  test  the 
validity  of  those  rules  in  the  nearest  possible 
way,  by  applying  them  to  the  varied  ex- 
amples in  this  wide  survey  of  what  has 
been  actually  well  done  in  English  prose, 
here  exhibited  on  the  side  of  their  strictly 
prosaic  merit — their  conformity,  before  all 
other  aims,  to  laws  of  a  structure  primarily 
reasonable.  Not  that  that  reasonable  prose 
structure,or  architecture,  as  Mr.  Saintsbury 
conceives  it,  has  been  always,  or  even 
generally,  the  ideal,  even  of  those  chosen 
writers  here  in  evidence.  Elizabethan  prose, 
all  too  chaotic  in  the  beauty  and  force 
which  overflowed  into  it  from  Elizabethan 
poetry,  and  incorrect  with  an  incorrectness 
which  leaves  it  scarcely  legitimate  prose  at 
all  :  then,  in  reaction  against  that,  the 
correctness  of  Dryden,  and  his  followers 
through  the  eighteenth  century,  determin- 


the  "  Guardian''  7 

ing  the  standard  of  a  prose  in  the  proper 
sense,  not  inferior  to  the  prose  of  the 
Augustan  age  in  Latin,  or  of  the  "greati 
age  in  France : "  and,  again  in  reaction 
against  this,  the  wild  mixture  of  poetry 
and  prose,  in  our  wild  nineteenth  century, 
under  the  influence  of  such  writers  as 
Dickens  and  Carlyle  : — such  are  the  three 
periods  into  which  the  story  of  our  prose 
literature  divides  itself.  And  Mr.  Saints- 
bury  has  his  well-timed,  practical  sugges- 
tions, upon  a  survey  of  them. 

If  the  invasion  of  the  legitimate  sphere 
of  prose  in  England  by  the  spirit  of  poetry 
weaker  or  stronger,  has  been  something  far 
deeper  than  is  indicated  by  that  tendency 
to  write  unconscious  blank  verse,  which  has 
made  it  feasible  to  transcribe  about  one- 
half  of  Dickens's  otherwise  so  admirable 
"  Barnaby  Rudge  "  in  blank-verse  lines,  a 
tendency  (outdoing  our  old  friend  M. 
Jourdain)  commoner  than  Mr-  Saintsbury 
admits,  such  lines  being  frequent  in  his 
favourite  Dryden  ;  yet,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  mio^ht  be  maintained,  and  would  be  main- 


8  Essays  from 

tained  by  its  French  critics,that  our  English 
poetry  has  been  too  apt  to  dispense  with 
those  prose  qualities,  which,  though  not  the 
indispensable  qualities  of  poetry,  go,  never- 
theless, to  the  making  of  all  first-rate  poetry 
— the  qualities, namely,  of  orderly  structure, 
and  such  qualities  generally  as  depend  upon 
second  thoughts.  A  collection  of  specimens 
of  English  poetry,  for  the  purpose  of  ex- 
hibiting the  achievement  of  prose  excel- 
lences by  it  (in  their  legitimate  measure)  is  a 
desideratum  we  commend  to  Mr.Saintsbury. 
It  is  the  assertion,  the  development,  the 
product  of  those  very  dififerent  indispens- 
able qualities  of  poetry,  in  the  presence 
of  which  the  English  is  equal  or  superior  to 
all  other  modern  literature — the  native, 
sublime,  and  beautiful,  but  often  wild  and 
irregular,  imaginative  power  in  English 
poetry  from  Chaucer  to  Shakespeare,  with 
which  Professor  Minto  deals,  in  his  "Char- 
acteristics of  English  Poets  "  (Blackwood), 
lately  reprinted.  That  his  book  should 
have  found  many  readers  we  can  well 
understand,  in  the  light   of  the  excellent 


the  "  Guardian''  9 

qualities  which,  in  high  degree,  have  gone 
to  the  making  of  it :  a  tasteful  learning, 
never  deserted  by  that  hold  upon  con- 
temporary literature  which  is  so  animat- 
ing an  influence  in  the  study  of  what 
belongs  to  the  past.  Beginning  with  an 
elaborate  notice  of  Chaucer,  full  of  the 
minute  scholarship  of  our  day,  he  never 
forgets  that  his  subject  is,  after  all,  poetry. 
The  followers  of  Chaucer,and  the  precursors 
of  Shakespeare,  are  alike  real  persons  to 
him — old  Langland  reminding  him  of 
Carlyle's  "Gospel  of  Labour."  The  product 
of  a  large  store  of  reading  has  been  here 
secreted  anew  for  the  reader  who  desires  to 
see,  in  bird's-eye  view,  the  light  and  shade 
of  a  long  and  varied  period  of  poetic 
literature,  by  way  of  preparation  for 
Shakespeare,  (with  a  full  essay  upon  whom 
the  volume  closes, )explaining  Shakespeare, 
so  far  as  he  can  be  explained  by  literary 
antecedents. 

That  powerful  poetry  was  twin-brother 
to  a  prose,  of  more  varied,  but  certainly  of 
wilder  and  more  irregular  power  than  the 


lo  Essays  from 

admirable,  the  typical,  prose  of  Dryden. 
In  Dryden,  and  his  followers  through  the 
eighteenth  century,  we  see  the  reaction 
against  the  exuberance  and  irregularity  of 
that  prose,  no  longer  justified  by  power, 
but  cognizable  rather  as  bad  taste.  But 
such  reaction  was  effective  only  because 
an  age  had  come — the  age  of  a  negative,  or 
agnostic  philosophy — in  which  men's  minds 
must  needs  belimited  to  thesuperficialitiesof 
things,  with  a  kind  of  narrowness  amounting 
to  a  positive  gift.  What  that  mental  attitude 
was  capable  of,  in  the  way  of  an  elegant, 
yet  plain-spoken,  and  lifelike  delineation  of 
men's  moods  and  manners, as  also  in  the  way 
of  determining  those  moods  and  manners 
themselves  to  all  that  was  lively,  unaffected, 
and  harmonious,can  be  seen  nowhere  better 
than  in  Mr.  Austin  Dobson's  "  Selections 
from  Steele  "  (Clarendon  Press)  prefaced 
by  his  careful  "  Life."  The  well-known 
qualities  of  Mr.  Dobson's  own  original  work 
are  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  the  taste  and 
discrimination  we  may  look  for  in  a  collec- 
tion likcthis.in  which  the  random  lifrhtninsfs 


the  "  Guardian''  1 1 

of  the  first  of  the  essayists  are  grouped 
undercertain  heads — "Character  Sketches," 
"Tales  and  Incidents,"  "Manners  and 
Fashions,"  and  the  like — so  as  to  diminish, 
for  the  general  reader,  the  scattered  effect 
of  short  essays  on  a  hundred  various 
subjects,  and  give  a  connected,  book-like 
character  to  the  specimens. 

Steele,  for  one,  had  certainly  succeeded 
in  putting  himself,  and  his  way  of  taking 
the  world — for  this  pioneer  of  an  every- 
body's literature  had  his  subjectivities — 
into  books.  What  a  survival  of  one  long- 
past  day,  for  instance,  in  "A  Ramble  from 
Richmond  to  London  "  !  What  truth  to 
the  surface  of  common  things,  to  their 
direct  claim  on  our  interest  !  yet  with  what 
originality  of  effect  in  that  truthfulness, 
when  he  writes,  for  instance  : 

"  I  went  to  my  lodgings,  led  by  a  light, 
whom  I  put  into  the  discourse  of  his  private 
economy,  and  made  himi  give  me  an  account 
of  the  charge,  hazard,  profit,  and  loss  of  a 
family  that  depended  upon  a  link." 

It  was  one  of  his  peculiarities,  he  tells 


1 2  Essays  from 

us,  to  live  by  the  eye  far  more  than  by  any 
other  sense  (a  peculiarity,  perhaps,  in  an 
Englishman),  and  this  is  what  he  sees  at 
the  early  daily  service  then  common  in 
some  City  churches.  Among  those  who 
were  come  only  to  see  or  be  seen,  "there 
were  indeed  a  few  in  whose  looks  there 
appeared  a  heavenly  joy  and  gladness  upon 
the  entrance  of  a  new  day,  as  if  they  had 
gone  to  sleep  with  expectation  of  it." 

The  industrious  reader,  indeed,  might 
select  out  of  these  specimens  from  Steele, 
a  picture,  in  minute  detail,  of  the  character- 
istic manners  of  that  time.  Still,  beside,  or 
only  a  little  way  beneath,  such  a  picture  of 
passing  fashion,  what  Steele  and  his  fellows 
really  deal  with  is  the  least  transitory 
aspects  of  life,  though  still  merely  aspects 
— those  points  in  which  all  human  nature, 
great  or  little,  finds  what  it  has  in  com- 
mon, and  directly  shows  itself  up.  The 
natural  strength  of  sucli  literature  will,  of 
course,  be  in  the  line  of  its  tendencies  ;  in 
transparency,  variety,  and  directness.  To 
the     unembarrassing    matter,    the    unem- 


the  "'  Guardian.''  13 

barrassed  style !  Steele  is,  perhaps,  the 
most  impulsive  writer  of  the  school  to  which 
he  belongs  ;  he  abounds  in  felicities  of  im- 
pulse. Yet  who  can  help  feeling  that  his 
style  is  regular  because  the  matter  he  deals 
with  is  the  somewhat  uncontentious,  even, 
limited  soul,  of  an  age  not  imaginative,  and 
unambitious  in  its  speculative  flight  ?  Even 
in  Steele  himself  we  may  observe  with 
what  sureness  of  instinct  the  men  of  that 
age  turned  aside  at  the  contact  of  anything 
likely  to  make  them,  in  any  sense,  forget 
themselves. 

No  one  indicates  better  than  Charles 
Lamb,  to  whose  memory  Mr.  Alfred  Ainger 
has  done  such  good  service,  the  great  and 
peculiar  change  which  was  begun  at  the 
end  of  the  last  century,  and  dominates  our 
own  ;  that  sudden  increase  of  the  width, 
the  depth,  the  complexity  of  intellectual 
interest,  which  has  many  times  torn  and 
distorted  literary  style,  even  with  those 
best  able  to  comprehend  its  laws.  In  "Mrs. 
Leicester's  School,  with  other  Writings  in 
Prose  and  Verse"  (Macmillan),  Mr.  Ainger 


14  Essays  from 

has  collected  and  annotated  certain  remains 
of  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb,  too  good  to 
lie  unknown  to  the  present  generation,  in 
forgotten  periodicals  or  inaccessible  re- 
prints. The  story  of  the  Odyssey,  abbre- 
viated in  very  simple  prose,  for  children — 
of  all  ages — will  speak  for  itself.  But  the 
garland  of  graceful  stories  which  gives 
name  to  the  volume,  told  by  a  party  of 
girls  on  the  evening  of  their  assembling  at 
school,  are  in  the  highest  degree  charac- 
teristic of  the  brother  and  sister  who  were 
ever  so  successful  in  imparting  to  others 
their  own  enjoyment  of  books  and  people. 
The  tragic  circumstance  which  strengthened 
and  consecrated  their  natural  community 
of  interest  had,  one  might  think,  something 
to  do  with  the  far-reaching  pensiveness  even 
of  their  most  humorous  writing,  touching 
often  the  deepest  springs  of  pity  and  awe, 
as  the  way  of  the  highest  humour  is — a  way, 
however,  very  different  from  that  of  the 
humorists  of  the  eighteenth  century.  But 
one  cannot  forget  also  that  Lamb  was  early 
an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Wordsworth  :  of 


the  "  Guardianr  1 5 

Wordsworth, the  firstcharacteristic  povverof 
the  nineteenth  century,  his  essay  on  whom, 
in  the  "Quarterly  Review,"  Mr.  Ainger  here 
reprints.  Wouldthathecouldhave  reprinted 
it  as  originally  composed,  and  ungarbled 
by  Gifford,  the  editor  !  Lamb,  like  Words- 
worth, still  kept  the  charm  of  a  serenity, 
a  precision,  unsurpassed  by  the  quietest 
essayist  of  the  preceding  age.  But  it  might 
have  been  foreseen  that  the  rising  tide  of 
thought  and  feeling,  on  the  strength  of 
which  they  too  are  borne  upward,  would 
sometimes  overflow  barriers.  And  so  it  hap- 
pens that  these  simple  stories  are  touched, 
much  as  Wordsworth's  verse-stories  were, 
with  tragic  power.  Dealing  with  the  begin- 
nings of  imagination  in  the  minds  of  child- 
ren, they  record,  with  the  reality  which  a 
very  delicate  touch  preserves  from  anything 
lugubrious,  not  those  merely  preventible 
miseries  of  childhood  over  which  some 
writers  have  been  apt  to  gloat,  but  the  con- 
tact of  childhood  with  the  great  and  in- 
evitable sorrows  of  life,  into  which  children 
can  enter   with   depth,  with   dignity,  and 


1 6  Essays  from 

sometimes  with  a  kind  of  simple,  pathetic 
greatness,  to  the  discipline  of  the  heart. 
Let  the  reader  begin  with  the"Sea  Voyage," 
which  is  by  Charles  Lamb ;  and,  what 
Mr.  Ainger  especially  recommends,  the 
"Father's  Wedding-Day,"  by  his  sister 
Mary. 

The  ever-increasing  intellectual  burden 
of  our  age  is  hardly  likely  to  adapt  itself  to 
the  exquisite,  but  perhaps  too  delicate  and 
limited,  literary  instruments  of  the  age  of 
Queen  Anne.  Yet  Mr.  Saintsbury  is  cer- 
tainly right  in  thinking  that,  as  regards 
style,  English  literature  has  much  to  do. 
Well,  the  good  quality  of  an  age,  the  defect 
of  which  lies  in  the  direction  of  intellectual 
anarchy  and  confusion,  may  well  be  eclec- 
ticism :  in  style,  as  in  other  things,  it  is 
well  always  to  aim  at  the  combination  of  as 
many  excellences  as  possible — opposite  ex- 
cellences, it  may  be, — those  other  beauties 
of  prose.  A  busy  age  will  hardly  educate 
its  writers  in  correctness.  Let  its  writers 
make  time  to  write  English  more  as  a 
learned   language  ;    and    completing    that 


the  "  Guardian  y  17 

correction  of  style  which  had  only  gone  a 
certain  way  in  the  last  century,  raise  the 
general  level  of  language  towards  their 
own.  If  there  be  a  weakness  in  Mr.  Saints- 
bury's  view,  it  is  perhaps  in  a  tendency  to 
regard  style  a  little  too  independently  of 
matter.  And  there  are  still  some  who 
think  that,  after  all,  the  style  is  the  man  ; 
justified,  in  very  great  varieties,  by  the 
simple  consideration  of  what  he  himself  has 
to  say,  quite  independently  of  any  real  or 
supposed  connection  with  this  or  that  lite- 
rary age  or  school.  Let  us  close  with  the 
words  of  a  most  versatile  master  of  English 
— happily  not  yet  included  in  Mr.  Saints- 
bury's  book — a  writer  who  has  dealt  with 
all  the  perturbing  influences  of  our  century 
in  a  manner  as  classical,  as  idiomatic,  as 
easy  and  elegant,  as  Steele's  : 

"  I  wish  you  to  observe,"  says  Cardinal 
Newman,  "  that  the  mere  dealer  in  words 
cares  little  or  nothing  for  the  subject  which 
he  is  embellishing,  but  can  paint  and  gild 
anything  whatever  to  order;  whereas  the 
artist,  whom  I  am  acknowledging,  has  his 
c 


1 8    Essays  fro7ft  the  "  Guardian^ 

great  or  rich  visions  before  him,  and  his 
only  aim  is  to  bring  out  what  he  thinks  or 
what  he  feels  in  a  way  adequate  to  the 
thing  spoken  of,  and  appropriate  to  the 
speaker." 


II. 

AMIEL'S  "JOURNAL  INTIME." 

March  17TH,  1886. 


AMIEL'S  "JOURNAL  INTIME." 

"  Amiel's  Journal."  The  "  Journal  Intime" 
of  Henri-Fr^ddric  Araiel.  Translated, 
with  an  Introduction  and  Notes,  by 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward.  Two  vols.  Mac- 
millans. 

ERTAIN  influential  expressions 
of  opinion  have  attracted  much 
curiosity  to  Amiel's  "  Journal  In- 
time,"  both  in  F" ranee,  where  the  book  has 
already  made  its  mark,  and  in  England, 
where  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's  translation 
is  likely  to  make  it  widely  known  among 
all  serious  lovers  of  good  literature.  Easy, 
idiomatic,correct,this  English  version  reads 
like  an  excellent  original  English  work, and 
gives  fresh  proof  that  the  work  of  transla- 


22  Essays  from 

tion,  if  it  is  to  be  done  with  effect,  must  be 
done  by  those  who,  possessing,  like  Mrs. 
Ward^  original  literary  gifts,  are  willing  to 
make  a  long  act  of  self-denial  or  self-efface- 
ment for  the  benefit  of  the  public.  In  this 
case,  indeed,  the  work  is  not  wholly  one  of 
self-effacement,  for  the  accomplished  trans- 
lator has  prefaced  "Amiel's  Journal  "  by  an 
able  and  interesting  essay  of  seventy  pages 
on  Amiel's  life  and  intellectual  position, 
And  certainly  there  is  much  in  the  book, 
thus  effectively  presented  to  the  English 
reader,  to  attract  those  who  interest  them- 
selves in  the  study  of  the  finer  types  of 
human  nature,  of  literary  expression,  of 
metaphysical  and  practical  philosophy  ;  to 
attract,  above  all,  those  interested  in  such 
philosophy,  at  points  where  it  touches  upon 
questions  of  religion,  and  especially  at  the 
present  day. 

Henri-Fr(^d^ric  Amiel  was  born  at 
Geneva  in  182 1.  Orphaned  of  both  his 
parents  at  the  age  of  twelve,  his  youth  was 
necessarily  "  a  little  bare  and  forlorn,"  and 
a  deep  interest  in  religion  became  fixed  in 


the  "  Guardian r  23 

him  early.  His  student  days  coming  to  an 
end,  the  years  which  followed,  from  1842 
to  1848 — WanderjaJire,  in  which  he  visited 
Holland,  Italy,  Sicily,  and  the  principal 
towns  of  Germany — seem  to  have  been  the 
happiest  of  his  life.  In  1849  ^e  became  a 
Professor  at  Geneva,  and  there  is  little  more 
to  tell  of  him  in  the  way  of  outward  events. 
He  published  some  volumes  of  verse  ;  to 
the  last  apparently  still  only  feeling  after 
his  true  literary  metier.  Those  last  seven 
years  were  a  long  struggle  against  the 
disease  which  ended  his  life,  consumption, 
at  the  age  of  fifty- three.  The  first  entry 
in  his  "Journal"  is  in  1848.  From  that 
date  to  his  death,  a  period  of  over  twenty- 
five  years,  this  "Journal  "  was  the  real 
object  of  all  the  energies  of  his  richly-en- 
dowed nature  :  and  from  its  voluminous 
sheets  his  literary  executors  have  selected 
the  deeply  interesting  volumes  now  pre- 
sented in  English. 

With  all  its  gifts  and  opportunities  it 
was  a  melancholy  life — melancholy  with 
something  not  altogether  explained  by  the 


24  Essays  from 

somewhat  pessimistic  philosophy  exposed 
in  the  "  Journal,"  nor  by  the  consumptive 
tendency  of  Amiel's  physical  constitution, 
causing  him  from  a  very  early  date  to  be 
much  preoccupied  with  the  effort  to  recon- 
cile himself  with  the  prospect  of  death, 
and  reinforcing  the  far  from  sanguine 
temperament  of  one  intellectually  also 
a  poitrinaire. 

You  might  think  him  at  first  sight  only 
an  admirable  specimen  of  a  thoroughly 
well-educated  man,  full,  of  course,  of  the 
modern  spirit  ;  stimulated  and  formed  by 
the  influences  of  the  varied  intellectual 
world  around  him  ;  and  competing,  in  his 
turn,  with  many  very  various  types  of  con- 
temporary ability.  The  use  of  his  book  to 
cultivated  people  might  lie  in  its  affording 
a  kind  of  standard  by  which  they  might 
take  measure  of  the  maturity  and  pro- 
ducible quality  of  their  own  thoughts  on  a 
hundred  important  subjects.  He  will  write 
a  page  or  two,  giving  evidence  of  that 
accumulated  power  and  attainment  which, 
with  a  more  strenuous  temperament,  might 


the  "  Guardianr  25 

have  sufficed  for  an  effective  volume.  Con- 
tinually, in  the  "Journal,"  we  pause  over 
things  that  would  rank  for  beauties  among 
widely  different  models  of  the  best  French 
prose.  He  has  said  some  things  in  Pascal's 
vein  not  unworthy  of  Pascal.  He  had  a 
right  to  compose  "Thoughts:"  they  have 
the  force  in  them  which  makes  up  for  their 
unavoidable  want  of  continuity. 

But  if,  as  Amiel  himself  challenges  us  to 
do.  we  look  below  the  surface  of  a  very 
equable  and  even  smoothly  accomplished 
literary  manner,  we  discover,  in  high  degree 
of  development,  that  perplexity  or  com- 
plexity of  soul,  the  expression  of  which,  so 
it  be  with  an  adequate  literary  gift,  has  its 
legitimate,  because  inevitable,  interest  for 
the  modern  reader.  Senancour  and  Maurice 
de  Guerin  in  one,  seem  to  have  been  sup- 
plemented here  by  a  larger  experience,  a 
far  greater  education,  than  either  of  them 
had  attained  to.  So  multiplex  is  the  result 
that  minds  of  quite  opposite  type  might 
well  discover  in  these  pages  their  own 
special    thought    or    humour,    happily    ex- 


26  Essays  from 

pressed  at  last  (they  might  think)  in  pre- 
cisely that  just  shade  of  language  them- 
selves had  searched  for  in  vain.  And  with 
a  writer  so  vivid  and  impressive  as  Amiel, 
those  varieties  of  tendency  are  apt  to  pre- 
sent themselves  as  so  many  contending 
persons.  The  perplexed  experience  gets 
the  apparent  clearness,  as  it  gets  also  the 
animation,  of  a  long  dialogue  ;  only,  the 
disputants  never  part  company,  and  there 
is  no  real  conclusion.  "This  nature,"  he 
observes,  of  one  of  the  many  phases  of 
character  he  has  discovered  in  himself,  "  is, 
as  it  were,  only  one  of  the  men  which  exist 
in  me.  It  is  one  of  my  departments.  It 
is  not  the  whole  of  my  territory,  the  whole 
of  my  inner  kingdom  ;  "  and  again,  "  there 
are  ten  men  in  me,  according  to  time,  place, 
surrounding",  and  occasion  ;  and,  in  my 
restless  diversity,  I  am  for  ever  escaping 
myself." 

Yet,  in  truth,  there  are  but  two  men  in 
Amiel — two  sufficiently  opposed  person- 
alities, which  the  attentive  reader  may 
define  for  himself ;  compare  with,  and  try 


the  "  Guardian^  27 

by  each  other — as  we  think,  correct  also 
by  each  other.  There  is  the  man,  in  him 
and  in  these  pages,  who  would  be  "the 
man  of  disillusion,"  only  that  he  has  never 
really  been  "  the  man  of  desires  ;  "  and  who 
seems,  therefore,  to  have  a  double  weari- 
ness about  him.  He  is  akin,  of  course,  to 
Obermann,  to  Ren^,  even  to  Werther,  and, 
on  our  first  introduction  to  him,  we  might 
think  that  we  had  to  do  only  with  one 
more  of  the  vague  "  renunciants,"  who  in 
real  life  followed  those  creations  of  fiction, 
and  who,  however  delicate,  interesting  as 
a  study,  and  as  it  were  picturesque  on 
the  stage  of  life,  are  themselves,  after  all, 
essentially  passive,  uncreative,  and  there- 
fore necessarily  not  of  first-rate  importance 
in  literature.  Taken  for  what  it  is  worth, 
the  expression  of  this  mood — the  culture  of 
enmii  for  its  own  sake — is  certainly  carried 
to  its  ideal  of  negation  by  Amiel.  But  the 
completer,  the  positive,  soul,  which  will 
merely  lake  that  mood  into  its  service  (its 
proper  service,  as  we  hold,  is  in  counter- 
action to  the  vulgarity  of  purely  positive 


28  Essays  from 

natures)  is  also  certainly  in  evidence  in 
Amiel's  "Thoughts" — that  other,  and  far 
stronger  person,  in  the  long  dialogue  ;  the 
man,  in  short,  possessed  of  gifts,  not  for 
the  renunciation,  but  for  the  reception 
and  use,  of  all  that  is  puissant,  goodly, 
and  effective  in  life,  and  for  the  varied 
and  adequate  literary  reproduction  of  it  ; 
who,  under  favourable  circumstances,  or 
even  without  them,  will  become  critic,  or 
poet,  and  in  either  case  a  creative  force; 
and  if  he  be  religious  (as  Amiel  was 
deeply  religious)  will  make  the  most  of 
"  evidence,"  and  almost  certainly  find  a 
Church. 

The  sort  of  purely  poetic  tendency  in 
his  mind,  which  made  Amiel  known  in  his 
own  lifetime  chiefly  as  a  writer  of  verse, 
seems  to  be  represented  in  these  volumes 
by  certain  passages  of  natural  descrip- 
tion, always  sincere,  and  sometimes  rising 
to  real  distinction.  In  Switzerland  it  is 
easy  to  be  pleased  with  scenery.  But  the 
record  of  such  pleasure  becomes  really 
worth  while  when,  as  happens  with  Amiel, 


the  ''  Guardian^  29 

we  feel  that  there  has  been,  and  with 
success,  an  intellectual  effort  to  get  at  the 
secret,  the  precise  motive,  of  the  pleasure  ; 
to  define  feeling,  in  this  matter.  Here  is 
a  good  description  of  an  effect  of  fog, 
which  we  commend  to  foreigners  resident 
in  London  : 

"  Fog  has  certainly  a  poetry  of  its  own — 
a  grace,  a  dreamy  charm.  It  does  for  the 
daylight  what  a  lamp  does  for  us  at  night  ; 
it  turns  the  mind  towards  meditation ;  it 
throws  the  soul  back  on  itself.  The  sun,  as 
it  were,  sheds  us  abroad  in  nature,  scatters 
and  disperses  us  ;  mist  draws  us  together 
and  concentrates  us — it  is  cordial,  homely, 
charged  with  feeling.  The  poetry  of  the 
sun  has  something  of  the  epic  in  it  ;  that  of 
fog  and  mist  is  elegiac  and  religious.  Pan- 
theism is  the  child  of  light ;  mist  engenders 
faith  in  near  protectors.  When  the  great 
world  is  shut  off  from  us,  the  house  becomes 
itself  a  small  universe.  Shrouded  in  per- 
petual mist,  men  love  each  other  better  ; 
for  the  only  reality  then  is  the  family,  and, 
within  the  family.the  heart;  and  the  greatest 


30  Essays  from 

thoughts  come  from  the  heart — so  says  the 
moralist." 

It  is  of  Swiss  fog,  however,  that  he  is 
speaking,  as,  in  what  follows,  of  Swiss  frost : 

"  Three  snowstorms  this  afternoon.  Poor 
blossoming  plum-trees  and  peach-trees ! 
What  a  difference  from  six  years  ago,  when 
the  cherry-trees,  adorned  in  their  green 
spring  dress  and  laden  with  their  bridal 
flowers,  smiled  at  my  departure  along  the 
Vaudois  fields,  and  the  lilacs  of  Burgundy 
threw  great  gusts  of  perfume  into  my 
face ! "  The  weather  is  seldom  talked  of 
with  so  much  real  sensitiveness  to  it  as  in 
this  : 

"  The  weather  is  rainy,  the  whole  atmo- 
sphere grey;  it  is  a  time  favourable  to 
thought  and  meditation.  I  have  a  liking 
for  such  days  as  these  ;  they  revive  one's 
converse  with  oneself  and  make  it  possible 
to  live  the  inner  life  :  they  are  quiet  and 
peaceful,  like  a  song  in  a  minor  key.  We 
are  nothing  but  thought,but  we  feel  our  life 
to  its  very  centre.  Our  very  sensations  turn 
to  reverie.     It  is  a  strange  state  of  mind  ; 


the  "  Guardian''  31 

it  is  like  those  silences  in  worship  which  are 
not  the  empty  moments  of  devotion,  but 
the  full  moments,  and  which  are  so  because 
at  such  times  the  soul,  instead  of  being 
polarized,  dispersed,  localized,  in  a  single 
impression  or  thought,  feels  her  own  totality 
and  is  conscious  of  herself." 

"  Every  landscape,"  he  writes,  *'  is,  as  it 
were,  a  state  of  the  soul :  "  and  again,  "  At 
bottom  there  is  but  one  subject  of  study  ; 
the  forms  and  metamorphoses  of  mind  :  all 
other  subjects  may  be  reduced  to  that  ;  all 
other  studies  bring  us  back  to  this  study." 
And,  in  truth,  if  he  was  occupied  with  the 
aspects  of  nature  to  such  an  excellent 
literary  result,  still,  it  was  with  nature  only 
as  a  phenomenon  of  the  moral  order.  His 
interest,after  all,  is,  consistently,  that  of  the 
moralist  (in  no  narrow  sense)  who  deals, 
from  predilection,  with  the  sort  of  literary 
work  which  stirs  men — stirstheirintellect — 
through  feeling  ;  and  with  that  literature, 
especially,  as  looked  at  through  the  means 
by  which  it  became  capable  of  thus  com- 
manding men.     The  powers,  the  culture,  of 


32  Essays  from 

the  literary  producer :  there,  is  the  centre 
of  Amiel's  curiosity. 

And  if  we  take  Amiel  at  his  own  word, 
we  must  suppose  that  but  for  causes,  the 
chief  of  which  were  bad  health  and  a  not 
long  life,  he  too  would  have  produced  monu- 
mental work,  whose  scope  and  character 
he  would  wish  us  to  conjecture  from  his 
"Thoughts."  Such  indications  there  cer- 
tainly are  in  them.  He  was  meant — we 
see  it  in  the  variety,  the  high  level  both  of 
matter  and  style,  the  animation,  the  gravity, 
of  one  after  another  of  these  thoughts — on 
religion,  on  poetry, on  politics  in  the  highest 
sense;  on  their  most  abstract  principles, and 
on  the  authors  who  have  given  them  a  per- 
sonal colour;  on  the  genius  of  those  authors, 
as  well  as  on  their  concrete  works;  on  out- 
lying isolated  subjects,  such  as  music,  and 
special  musical  composers — he  was  meant, 
if  people  ever  are  meant  for  special  lines  of 
activity,  for  the  best  sort  of  criticism,  the 
imaginative  criticism  ;  that  criticism  which 
is  itself  a  kind  of  construction,  or  creation, 
as  it  penetrates,  through  the  given  literary 


the  "  Guardian."  33 

or  artistic  product,  into  the  mental  and 
inner  constitution  of  the  producer,  shaping 
his  work.  Of  such  critical  skill,  cultivated 
with  all  the  resources  of  Genevain  the  nine- 
teenth century,he  hasgiven  in  this  "Journal" 
abundant  proofs.  Corneille,  Cherbuliez ; 
Rousseau,  Sismondi  ;  Victor  Hugo,  and 
Joubert  ;  Mozart  and  Wagner — all  who  are 
interested  in  these  men  will  find  a  value  in 
what  Amiel  has  to  say  of  them.  Often,  as 
for  instance  in  his  excellent  criticism  of 
Quinet,  he  has  to  make  large  exceptions  ; 
limitations,skilfully  efiected  by  the  way,  in 
the  course  of  a  really  appreciative  estimate. 
Still,  through  all,  what  we  feel  is  that  we 
have  to  do  with  one  who  criticises  in  this 
fearlessly  equitable  manner  only  because  he 
is  convinced  that  his  subject  is  of  a  real 
literary  importance.  A  powerful,  intel- 
lectual analysis  of  some  well-marked  sub- 
ject,in  such  form  as  makes  literature  endur- 
ing, is  indeed  what  the  world  might  have 
looked  for  from  him  :  those  institutes  of 
aesthetics,  for  instance,  which  might  exist, 
after  Lt;s.sing  and  Hegel,  but  which  cer- 
D 


34  Essays  from 

tainly  do  not  exist  yet.  "  Construction," 
he  says — artistic  or  literary  construction — 
"  rests  upon  feeling,  instinct,  and,"  alas  ! 
also,  "upon  will."  The  instinct,  at  all  events, 
was  certainly  his.  And  over  and  above 
that  he  had  possessed  himself  of  the  art  of 
expressing,  in  quite  natural  language,  very 
difficult  thoughts;  those  abstract  and  meta- 
physical conceptions  especially,  in  which 
German  mind  has  been  rich,  which  are  bad 
masters,  but  very  useful  ministers  towards 
the  understanding,  towards  an  analytical 
survey,of  all  that  the  intellect  has  produced. 
But  something  held  him  back  :  not  so 
much  a  reluctancy  of  temperament,  or  of 
physical  constitution  (common  enough  cause 
why  men  of  undeniable  gifts  fail  of  com- 
mensurate production)  but  a  cause  purely 
intellectual — ;-the  presence  in  him,  namely, 
of  a  certain  vein  of  opinion;  that  other,  con- 
stituent but  contending,  person,  in  his  com- 
plex nature.  "The  relation  of  thought  to 
action,"  he  writes,  "  filled  my  mind  on  wak- 
ing, and  I  found  myself  carried  towards  a 
bizarre  formula,  which  seems  to  have  some- 


the  '"  Guardian r  35 

thing  of  the  night  still  clinging  about  it. 
Action  is  but  coarsened  thought''  That  is 
but  an  ingenious  metaphysical  point,  as  he 
goes  on  to  show.  But,  including  in  "action" 
that  literary  production  in  which  the  line  of 
his  own  proper  activity  lay,  he  followed — 
followed  often — that  fastidious  utterance  to 
a  cynical  and  pessimistic  conclusion.  Maia, 
as  he  calls  it,  the  empty  "Absolute"  of  the 
Buddhist, the  "Infinite,"  the  "All,"of  which 
thoseGerman  metaphysicians  he  lovedonly 
too  well  have  had  so  much  to  say  :  this  was 
for  ever  to  give  the  go-by  to  all  positive, 
finite,  limited  interests  whatever.  The 
vague  pretensions  of  an  abstract  expression 
acted  on  him  withall  the  forceof  aprejudice. 
"The  ideal,"  he  admits,  "  poisons  for  me  all 
imperfect  possession  ;  "  and  again,  "  The 
Buddhist  tendency  in  me  blunts  the  faculty 
of  free  self-government,  and  weakens  the 
power  of  action.  I  feel  a  terror  of  action 
and  am  only  at  ease  in  the  impersonal, 
disinterested,and  objectiveline  of  thought." 
But  then,  again,  with  him  "  action  "  meant 
chiefly  literary  production.  He  quotes  with 


36  Essays  from 

approval  those  admirable  words  from 
Goethe,  "  In  der  Beschrankung  zeigt  sich 
erst  der  Meister;"  yet  still  always  finds  him- 
self wavering  between  "  frittering  myself 
away  on  theinfinitelylittle,and  longingafter 
what  is  unknown  and  distant."  There  is, 
doubtless,  over  and  above  the  physical  con- 
sumptive tendency,  an  instinctive  turn  of 
sentiment  in  this  touchingconfession.  Still, 
what  strengthenedboth  tendencies  wasthat 
metaphysical  prejudice  for  the  "Absolute," 
the  false  intellectual  conscience.  "  I  have 
always  avoided  what  attracted  me,  and 
turned  my  back  upon  the  poiiit  where 
secretly  I  desired  to  be;  "  and,  of  course, 
that  is  not  the  way  to  a  free  and  generous 
productivity,  in  literature,  or  in  anything 
else  ;  though  in  literature,  with  Amiel  at  all 
events,  it  meant  the  fastidiousftess  which  is 
incompatible  with  any  but  the  very  best 
sort  of  production. 

And  as  that  abstract  condition  of  Main, 
to  the  kind  and  quantity  of  concrete  literary 
production  we  hold  to  have  been  originally 
possible  for  him  ;  so  was  the  religion  he 


the  "  Guardian''  37 

actually  attained,  to  what  might  have  been 
the  development  of  his  profoundly  religious 
spirit,  had  he  been  able  to  see  that  the  old- 
fashioned  Christianity  is  itself  but  theproper 
historic  development  of  the  true  "  essence  " 
of  the  New  Testament.  There,  again,  is 
the  constitutional  shrinking,through  a  kind 
of  metaphysical  prejudice,  from  the  con- 
crete— that  fear  of  the  actual — in  this  case, 
of  the  Church  of  history ;  to  which  the 
admissions,  which  form  so  large  a  part  of 
these  volumes,  naturally  lead.  Assenting, 
on  probable  evidence,  to  so  many  of  the 
judgments  of  the  religious  sense,  he  failed 
to  see  the  equally  probable  evidence  there  is 
for  the  beliefs, thepeculiar  directionof  men's 
hopes,  which  complete  those  judgments 
harmoniously,  and  bring  them  into  connec- 
tion with  the  facts, the  venerable  institutions 
of  the  past — with  the  lives  of  the  saints. 
By  failure,as  we  think,of  that  historic  sense, 
of  which  he  could  speak  so  well,  begot  no 
further  in  this  direction  than  the  glacial 
condition  of  rationalistic  Geneva.  "  Philo- 
sophy," he   says,   "can   never  replace  re- 


38  Essays  front 

ligion."  Only,  one  cannot  see  why  it  might 
not  replace  a  religion  such  as  his:  a  religion, 
after  all,  much  like  Seneca's.  "  I  miss 
something,"  he  himself  confesses,  "common 
worship,  a  positive  religion,  shared  with 
other  people.  Ah  !  when  will  the  Church 
to  which  I  belong  in  heart  rise  into  being  ?" 
To  many  at  least  of  those  who  can  detect 
the  ideal  through  the  disturbing  circum- 
stances which  belong  to  all  actual  institu- 
tions in  the  world,  it  was  already  there. 
Pascal,  from  considerations  to  which  Amiel 
was  no  stranger,  came  to  the  large  hopes 
of  the  Catholic  Church  ;  Amiel  stopped 
short  at  a  faith  almost  hopeless  ;  and  by 
stopping  short  just  there  he  really  failed, 
as  we  think,  of  intellectual  consistency,  and 
missed  that  appeasing  influence  which  his 
nature  demanded  as  the  condition  of  its  full 
activity,  as  a  force,  an  intellectual  force,  in 
the  world — inthe  special  businessof  his  life. 
"Welcome  the  unforeseen,"  he  says  again, 
by  way  of  a  counsel  of  perfection  in  the 
matter  of  culture,  "  but  give  to  your  life 
unity,  and  bring  the  unforeseen  within  the 


the  "  Guardiajtr  39 

lines  of  your  plan."  Bring,  we  should  add 
the  Great  Possibility  at  least  within  the 
lines  of  your  plan — your  plan  of  action  or 
production  ;  of  morality  ;  especially  of  your 
conceptions  of  religion.  And  still,  Amiel 
too,  be  it  remembered  (we  are  not  afraid  to 
repeat  it),  has  said  some  things  in  Pascal's 
vein  not  unworthy  of  Pascal. 

And  so  we  get  only  the  "  Journal." 
Watching  in  it,  in  the  way  we  have  sug- 
gested, the  contention  of  those  two  men, 
those  two  minds  in  him,  and  observing  how 
the  one  might  have  ascertained  and  cor- 
rected the  shortcomings  of  the  other,  we 
certainly  understand,  and  can  sympathize 
with  Amiel's  despondency  in  the  retrospect 
of  a  life  which  seemed  to  have  been  but 
imperfectly  occupied.  But,  then,  how  ex- 
cellent a  literary  product,  after  all,  the 
"  Journal  "  is.  And  already  we  have  found 
that  it  improves  also  on  second  reading. 
A  book  of  "  thoughts  "  should  be  a  book 
that  may  be  fairly  dipped  into,  and  yield 
good  quotable  sayings.  Here  are  some  of 
its  random  offerings  : 


40  Essays  from 

"  Look  twice,  if  what  you  want  is  a  just 
conception  ;  look  once,  if  what  you  want  is 
a  sense  of  beauty." 

"  It  is  not  history  which  teaches  con- 
science to  be  honest ;  it  is  the  conscience 
which  educates  history.  Fact  is  corrupting 
— it  is  we  who  correct  it  by  the  persistence 
of  our  ideal." 

"To  do  easily  what  is  difficult  for  others 
is  the  mark  of  talent.  To  do  what  is  im- 
possible for  talent  is  the  mark  of  genius." 

"  Duty  has  the  virtue  of  making  us  feel 
the  reality  of  a  positive  world,  while  at  the 
same  time  detaching  us  from  it." 

"As  it  is  impossible  to  be  outside  God, 
the  best  is  consciously  to  dwell  in  Him." 

"  He  also  (the  Son  of  Man),  He  above 
all,  is  the  great  Misunderstood,  the  least 
comprehended." 

"  T\\Q  peiisee  writer  is  to  the  philosopher 
what  the  dilettante  is  to  the  artist." 

There  are  some,  we  know,  who  hold  that 
genius  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be 
"sterile;"  that  there  are  no  "mute"  Miltons, 
or  the  like.     Well !    genius,  or  only  a  very 


the  "  Gtcardiany  41 

distinguished  talent,  the  gift  which  Amiel 
nursed  so  jealously  did  come  into  evidence. 
And  the  reader,  we  hope,  sees  also  already 
how  well  his  Eno;lish  translator  has  done 
her  work.  She  may  justly  feel,  as  part  at 
least  of  the  reward  of  a  labour  which  must 
have  occupied  much  time,  so  many  of  the 
freshest  hours  of  mind  and  spirit,  that  she 
has  done  something  to  help  her  author  in 
the  achievement  of  his.however  discouraged 
still  irrepressible,desire,  by  giving  additional 
currency  to  a  book  which  the  best  sort  of 
readers  will  recognize  as  an  excellent  and 
certainly  very  versatile  companion,  not  to 
be  forgotten. 


III. 

BROWNING. 

November  9TH,  1887. 


BROWNING. 


An  Introduction  to  the  study  of  Brown- 
ing."    By  Arthur  Symons.     Cassells. 

WHETHER  it  be  true  or  not  that 
Mr.  Browning  is  justly  charge- 
able with  "obscurity"  —  with  a 
difficulty  of  manner,  that  is,  beyond  the 
intrinsic  difficulty  of  his  matter — it  is  very 
probable  that  an  Introduction  to  the 
study  of  his  works,  such  as  this  of  Mr. 
Symons,  will  add  to  the  number  of  his 
readers.  Mr.  Symons'  opening  essay  on  the 
general  characteristics  of  Mr.  Browning  is 
a  just  and  acceptable  appreciation  of  his 
poetry  as  a  whole,  well  worth  reading,  even 
at  this  late  day.  We  find  in  ?klr. Symons  the 
thoughtful  and  practised  yet  enthusiastic 
student  in  literature — in  intellectual  pro- 


46  Essays  from 

blems  ;  always  quiet  and  sane,  praising  Mr. 
Browning  with  tact,  with  a  real  refinement 
and  grace ,  saying  well  many  things  which 
every  competent  reader  of  the  great  poet 
must  feel  to  be  true  ;  devoting  to  the  subject 
he  loves  a  critical  gift  so  considerable  as  to 
make  us  wish  for  work  from  his  hands  of 
larger  scope  than  this  small  volume.  His 
book  is,  according  to  his  intention,  before 
all  things  a  useful  one.  Appreciating 
Mr.  Browning  fairly,  as  we  think,  in  all 
his  various  efforts,  his  aim  is  to  point 
his  readers  to  the  best,  the  indisputable, 
rather  than  to  the  dubious  portions  of  his 
author's  work.  Not  content  with  his  own 
excellent  general  criticism  of  Mr.  Brown- 
ing, he  guides  the  reader  to  his  works, 
or  division  of  work,  seriatim,  making  of 
each  a  distinct  and  special  study,  and 
giving  a  great  deal  of  welcome  informa- 
tion about  the  poems,  the  circumstances 
of  their  composition,  and  the  like,  with 
delightful  quotations.  Incidentally,  his  In- 
troduction has  the  interest  of  a  brief  but 
effective   selection    from    Mr.  Browning's 


the  "  Guardiany  47 

poems  ;  and  he  has  added  an  excellent  bio- 
graphy. 

Certainly  we  shall  not  quarrel  with  Mr. 
Symons  for  reckoning  Mr.Browning,among 
English  poets,second  to  Shakespeare  alone 
— "  He  comes  very  near  the  gigantic  total 
of  Shakespeare."  The  quantity  of  his  work.-* 
Yes  !  that  too,  in  spite  of  a  considerable 
unevenness,  is  a  sign  of  genius.  "So  large, 
indeed,  appear  to  be  his  natural  endow- 
ments that  we  cannot  feel  as  if  even  thirty 
volumes  would  have  come  near  to  exhaust- 
ing them."  Imaginatively,  indeed,  Mr. 
Browning  has  been  a  multitude  of  persons  ; 
only  (as  Shakespeare's  only  untried  style 
was  the  simple  one)  almost  never  simple 
ones  ;  and  certainly  he  has  controlled  them 
all  to  profoundly  interesting  artistic  ends 
by  his  own  powerful  personality.  The 
world  and  all  its  action,  as  a  show  of 
thought,  that  is  the  scope  of  his  work.  It 
makes  him  pre-eminently  a  modern  poet — 
a  poet  of  the  self-pondering,  perfectly  edu- 
cated, modern  world,  which,  having  come 
to  the  end  of  all  direct  and  purely  external 


48  Essays  from 

experiences,  must  necessarily  turn  for  its 
entertainment  to  the  world  within  :  — 

"The  men  and  women  who  live  and 
move  in  that  new  world  of  his  creation  are 
as  varied  as  life  itself;  they  are  kings  and 
beggars,  saints  and  lovers,  great  captains, 
poets,painters,musicians, priests  and  Popes, 
Jews,  gipsies  and  dervishes,  street-girls, 
princesses,dancers  with  the  wicked  witchery 
of  the  daughter  of  Herodias,  wives  with  the 
devotion  of  the  wife  of  Brutus,  joyous  girls 
and  malevolent  grey-beards,  statesmen, 
cavaliers,  soldiers  of  humanity,  tyrants  and 
bigots,  ancient  sages  and  modern  spiritual- 
ists, heretics,  scholars,  scoundrels, devotees, 
rabbis,  persons  of  quality  and  men  of  low 
estate — men  and  women  as  multiform  as 
nature  or  society  has  made  them." 

The  individual,  the  personal,  the  con- 
crete, as  distinguished  from,  yet  revealing 
in  its  fulness,  the  general,  the  universal — 
that  is  Mr.  Browning's  chosen  subject- 
matter  :  — "  Every  man  is  for  him  an 
epitome  of  the  universe,  a  centre  of  crea- 
tion." It  is  always  the  particular  soul,  and 


the  ''  Guardian^  49 

the  particular  act  or  episode,  as  the  flower 
of  the  particular  soul — the  act  or  episode 
by  which  its  quality  comes  to  the  test — in 
which  he  interests  us.  With  him  it  is 
always  "a  drama  of  the  interior,  a  tragedy 
or  comedy  of  the  soul,  to  see  thereby  how 
each  soul  becomes  conscious  of  itself."  In 
the  Preface  to  the  later  edition  of  "  Sor- 
dello,"  Mr.  Browning  himself  told  us  that 
to  him  little  else  seems  worth  study  except 
the  development  of  a  soul,  the  incidents, 
the  story,  of  that.  And,  in  fact,  the  intel- 
lectual public  generally  agrees  with  him. 
It  is  because  he  has  ministered  with  such 
marvellous  vigour,  and  variety,  and  line 
skill  to  this  interest,  that  he  is  the  most 
modern,  to  modern  people  the  most  impor- 
tant, of  poets. 

So  much  for  Mr.  Browning's  matter  ;  for 
his  manner,  we  hold  Mr.  Symons  right  in 
thinking  him  a  master  of  all  the  arts  of 
poetry.  "These  extraordinary  little  poems," 
says  Mr.  Symons  of  "Johannes  Agricola  " 
and  '*  Porphyria's  Lover"  — 

"•'  Reveal  not  only  an  imagination  of  in- 
E 


50  Essays  from 

tense  fire  and  heat,but  an  almost  finished  art 
— a  power  of  conceiving  subtle  mental  com- 
plexities with  clearness  and  of  expressing 
them  in  a  picturesque  form  and  in  perfect 
lyric  language.  Each  poem  renders  a  single 
mood,  and  renders  it  completely." 

Well,  after  all,  that  is  true  of  a  large  por- 
tion of  Mr.  Browning's  work.  A  curious, 
an  erudite  artist,  certainly,  he  is  to  some 
extent  an  experimenter  in  rhyme  or  metre, 
often  hazardous.  But  in  spite  of  the 
dramatic  rudeness  which  is  sometimes  of 
the  idiosyncras}',  the  true  and  native  colour 
of  his  multitudinous  dramatis  personcB,  or 
monologists,  Mr.  Symons  is  right  in  laying 
emphasis  on  the  grace,  the  finished  skill, 
the  music,  native  and  ever  ready  to  the 
poet  himself — tender,  manly,  humorous, 
awe-stricken — when  speaking  in  his  own 
proper  person.  Music  herself,  the  analysis 
of  the  musical  soul,  in  the  characteristic 
episodes  of  its  development  is  a  wholly  new 
range  of  poetic  subject  in  which  Mr. Brown- 
ing is  simply  unique.  Mr.  Symons  tells 
us :  — 


the  '"'' Guardian y  51 

"  When  Mr.  Browning  was  a  mere  boy,  it 
is  recorded  that  he  debated  within  himself 
whether  he  should  not  become  a  painter  or 
a  musician  as  well  as  a  poet.  Finally, 
though  not,  I  believe,  for  a  good  many 
years,  he  decided  in  the  negative.  But  the 
latent  qualities  of  painter  and  musician  had 
developed  themselves  in  his  poetry,  and 
much  of  his  finest  and  very  much  of  his 
most  original  verse  is  that  which  speaks  the 
language  of  painter  and  musician  as  it  had 
never  before  been  spoken.  No  English 
poet  before  him  has  ever  excelled  his  utter- 
ances on  music, none  has  so  much  as  rivalled 
his  utterances  on  art.  '  Abt  Vogler '  is  the 
richest,  deepest,  fullest  poem  on  music  in 
the  language.  It  is  not  the  theories  of  the 
poet, but  the  instincts  of  the  musician,  that 
it  speaks.  '  Master  Hugues  of  Saxe-Gotha,' 
another  special  poem  on  music,  is  unparal- 
leled for  ingenuity  of  technical  interpreta- 
tion :  '  A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's  '  is  as  rare  a 
rendering  as  can  anywhere  be  found  of  the 
impressions  and  sensations  caused  by  a 
musical  piece  ;  but  'Abt  Vogler'  is  a  very 


52  Essays  from 

glimpse  into   the   heaven   where   music  is 
born." 

It  is  true  that  "  when  the  head  has  to  be 
exercised  before  the  heart  there  is  chillino; 
of  sympathy."  Of  course,  so  intellectual  a 
poet  (and  only  the  intellectual  poet,  as  we 
have  pointed  out,  can  be  adequate  to 
modern  demands)  will  have  his  difficulties. 
They  were  a  part  of  the  poet's  choice 
of  vocation,  and  he  was  fully  aware  of 
them  :  — 

"  Mr.  Browning  might  say,  as  his  wife 
said  in  an  early  preface,  I  never  mistook 
pleasure  for  the  final  cause  of  poetry,  nor 
leisure  for  the  hour  of  the  poet — as  indeed 
he  has  himself  said,to  much  the  same  effect, 
in  a  letter  printed  many  years  ago  :  I  never 
pretended  to  offer  such  literature  as  should 
be  a  substitute  for  a  cigar  or  a  game  at 
dominoes  to  an  idle  man." 

"  Moreover,  while  a  writer  who  deals 
with  easy  themes  has  no  excuse  if  he  is  not 
pellucid  to  a  glance,  one  who  employs  his 
intellect  and  imagination  on  high  and  hard 
questions  has  a   right  to  demand  a  corre- 


the  "  Guardian''  53 

spending  closeness  of  attention,  and  a  right 
to  say  with  Bishop  Butler,  in  answer  to  a 
similar  complaint :  '  It  must  be  acknow- 
ledged that  some  of  the  following  discourses 
are  very  abstruse  and  difficult,  or,  if  you 
please,  obscure  ;  but  I  must  take  leave  to 
add  that  those  alone  are  judges  whether  or 
no,  and  how  far  this  is  a  fault,  who  are 
judges  whether  or  no,  and  how  far  it  might 
have  been  avoided — those  only  who  will  be 
at  the  trouble  to  understand  what  is  here 
said,  and  to  see  how  far  the  things  here  in- 
sisted upon,  and  not  other  things,  might 
have  been  put  in  a  plainer  manner.'  " 

In  Mr,  Symons's  opinion  "  Pippa  Passes  " 
is  Mr.  Browning's  most  perfect  piece  of 
work,  for  pregnancy  of  intellecu,  combined 
with  faultless  expression  in  a  perfectly 
novel  yet  symmetrical  outline  :'  and  he  is 
very  likely  right.  He  is  certainly  right  in 
thinking  "Men  and  Women,"  as  they  for- 
merly stood, Mr.Browning's  most  delightful 
volumes.  It  is  only  to  be  regretted  that  in 
the  later  collected  edition  of  the  works 
those  two  magical  old  volumes  are  broken 


54  Essays  from 

up  and  scattered  under  other  headings. 
We  think  also  that  Mr.  Symons  in  his  high 
praise  does  no  more  than  justice  to  the 
"Ring  and  the  Book."  The  "  Ring  and 
the  Book  "  is  at  once  the  largest  and  the 
greatest  of  Mr.  Browning's  works,  the  cul- 
mination of  his  dramatic  method,  and  the 
turning-point  more  decisively  than  "  Dra- 
matis Personae  "  of  his  style.  Yet  just  here 
he  rightly  marks  a  change  in  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's manner  :  — 

"  Not  merely  the  manner  of  presentment, 
the  substance,  and  also  the  style  and  versi- 
fication have  undergone  a  change.  I  might 
point  to  the  profound  intellectual  depth  of 
certain  pieces  as  its  characteristic,  or, 
equally,  to  the  traces  here  and  there  of  an 
apparent  carelessness  of  workmanship  ;  or, 
yet  again,  to  the  new  and  very  marked  par- 
tiality for  scenes  and  situations  of  English 
and  modern  rather  than  mediaeval  and 
foreign  life." 

Noble  as  much  of  Mr.  Browning's  later 
work  is,  full  of  intellect,  alive  with  excellent 
passages  (in  the  first  volume  of  the  "  Dra- 


the  "  Guardian  r  55 

matic  Idyls  "  perhaps  more  powerful  than 
in  any  earlier  work)  ;  notwithstanding  all 
that,  we  think  the  change  here  indicated 
matter  of  regret.  After  all,  we  have  to 
conjure  up  ideal  poets  for  ourselves  out  of 
those  who  stand  in  or  behind  the  range  of 
volumes  on  our  book-shelves ;  and  our 
ideal  Browning  would  have  for  his  entire 
structura  1  type  those  two  volumes  of  "  Men 
and  Women  "  with  "  Pippa  Passes." 

Certainly,  it  is  a  delightful  world  to 
which  Mr.  Browning  has  given  us  the  key, 
and  those  volumes  a  delightful  gift  to  our 
age-record  of  so  much  that  is  richest  in  the 
world  of  things,  and  men,  and  their  works 
— all  so  much  the  richer  by  the  great  in- 
tellect, the  great  imagination,  which  has 
made  the  record,  transmuted  them  into  im- 
perishable things  of  art  :  — 

"  '  With  souls  should  souls  have  place  ' — 
this,  with  Mr.  Browning,is  something  more 
than  a  mere  poetical  conceit.  It  is  the 
condensed  expression  of  an  experience,  a 
philosophy,  and  an  art.  Like  the  lovers  of 
his  lyric,  Mr.  Browning  has  renounced  the 


56     Essays  from  the  "  Guardian^ 

selfish  serenities  of  wild-wood  and  dream- 
palace  ;  he  has  fared  up  and  down  among 
men,  listenino;  to  the  music  of  humanity, 
observing  the  acts  of  men,  and  he  has  sung 
what  he  has  heard,  and  he  has  painted 
what  he  has  seen.  Will  the  work  live  ?  we 
ask  ;  and  we  can  answer  only  in  his  own 
words  — 

It  lives, 
If  precious  be  the  soul  of  man  to  man." 


IV. 
ROBERT  ELSMERE. 

March  28th,   1888. 


ROBERT  ELSMERE. 

HOSE  who,  in  this  bustling  age, 
turn  to  fiction  not  merely  for  a 
little  passing  amusement,  but  for 
profit,  for  the  higher  sort  of  pleasure,  will  do 
well,  we  think  (after  a  conscientious  perusal 
on  our  own  part)  to  bestow  careful  reading 
on  "Robert  Elsmere."  Kchefd' (2uvreoi\.\\2X 
kind  of  quiet  evolution  of  character  through 
circumstance,  introduced  into  English 
literature  by  Miss  Austen,  and  carried  to 
perfection  in  France  by  George  Sand  (who 
is  more  to  the  point,  because,  like  Mrs. 
Ward,  she  was  not  afraid  to  challenge 
novel-readers  to  an  interest  in  religious 
questions)  it  abounds  in  sympathy  with 
people  as  we  find  them^  in  aspiration  to- 
wards something  better — towards  a  certain 


6o  Essays  from 

ideal — in  a  refreshing  sense  of  second 
thoughts  everywhere.  The  author  clearly 
has  developed  a  remarkable  natural  apti- 
tude for  literature  by  liberal  reading  and 
most  patient  care  in  composition — com- 
position in  that  narrower  sense  which  is 
concerned  with  the  building  of  a  good 
sentence  ;  as  also  in  that  wider  sense, 
which  ensures,  in  a  work  like  this,  with  so 
many  joints,  so  many  currents  of  interest, 
a  final  unity  of  impression  on  the  part  of 
the  reader,  and  easy  transition  by  him  from 
one  to  the  other.  Well-used  to  works  of 
fiction  which  tell  all  they  have  to  tell  in 
one  thin  volume,  we  have  read  Mrs.  Ward's 
three  volumes  with  unflagging  readiness. 
For,  in  truth,  that  quiet  method  of  evolu- 
tion, which  she  pursues  undismayed  to  the 
end,  requires  a  certain  lengthiness  ;  and  the 
reader's  reward  will  be  in  a  secure  sense 
that  he  has  been  in  intercourse  with  no 
mere  flighty  remnants,  but  with  typical 
forms,  of  character,  firmly  and  fully  con- 
ceived. We  are  persuaded  that  the  author 
misrht  have   written  a  novel  which  should 


the  "  Guardian''  6i 

have  been  all  shrewd  impressions  of  society, 
or  all  humorous  impressions  of  country 
life,  or  all  quiet  fun  and  genial  caricature. 
Actually  she  has  chosen  to  combine  some- 
thing of  each  of  these  with  a  very  sincerely 
felt  religious  interest  ;  and  who  will  deny 
that  to  trace  the  influence  of  religion  upon 
human  character  is  one  of  the  legitimate 
functions  of  the  novel  ?  In  truth,  the 
modern  "novel  of  character"  needs  some 
such  interest,  to  lift  it  sufficiently  above 
the  humdrum  of  life  ;  as  men's  horizons  are 
enlarged  by  religion,  of  whatever  type  it 
may  be — and  we  may  say  at  once  that  the 
religious  type  which  is  dear  to  Mrs.  Ward, 
though  avowedly  "  broad,"  is  not  really  the 
broadest.  Having  conceived  her  work 
thus,  she  has  brought  a  rare  instinct  for 
probability  and  nature  to  the  difficult  task 
of  combining  this  religious  motive  and  all 
the  learned  thought  it  involves,  with  a  very 
genuine  interest  in  many  varieties  of 
average  mundane  life. 

We  should  say  that  the  author's  special 
ethical    gift    lay   in  a  delicately    intuitive 


62  Essays  front 

sympathy,  not,  perhaps,  with  all  phases 
of  character,  but  certainly  with  the  very 
varied  class  of  persons  represented  in  these 
volumes.  It  may  be  congruous  with  this, 
perhaps,  that  her  success  should  be  more 
assured  in  dealing  with  the  characters  of 
women  than  with  those  of  men.  The  men 
who  pass  before  us  in  her  pages,  though 
real  and  tangible  and  effective  enough, 
seem,  nevertheless,  from  lime  to  time  to 
reveal  their  joinings.  They  are  composite 
of  many  different  men  we  seem  to  have 
known,  and  fancy  we  could  detach  again 
from  the  ensemble  and  from  each  other. 
And  their  goodness,  when  they  are  good, 
is — well !  a  little  conventional  ;  the  kind 
of  goodness  that  men  themselves  discount 
rather  largely  in  their  estimates  of  each 
other,  Robert  himself  is  certainly  worth 
knowing — a  really  attractive  union  of  man- 
liness and  saintliness,  of  shrewd  sense  and 
unworldly  aims,  and  withal  with  that 
kindness  and  pity  the  absence  of  which  so 
often  abates  the  actual  value  of  those  other 
gifts.     Mrs.  Ward's  literary  power  is  some- 


the  "  Guardian  r  63 

times  seen  at  its  best  (it  is  a  proof  of  her 
high  cultivation  of  this  power  that  so  it 
should  be)  in  the  analysis  of  minor 
characters,  both  male  and  female.  Richard 
Leyburn,  deceased  before  the  story  begins, 
but  warm  in  the  memory  of  the  few  who 
had  known  him,  above  all  of  his  great-souled 
daughter  Catherine,  strikes  us,  with  his 
religious  mysticism,  as  being  in  this  way 
one  of  the  best  things  in  the  book  :  — 

"  Poor  Richard  Leyburn  !  Yet  where 
had  the  defeat  lain  ? 

"'Was  he  happy  in  his  school  life?' 
Robert  asked  gently.  '  Was  teaching  what 
he  liked  ? ' 

"  '  Oh  !  yes,  only '  Catherine  paused 

and  then  added  hurriedly,  as  though  drawn 
on  in  spite  of  herself  by  the  grave  sympathy 
of  his  look, '  I  never  knew  anybody  so  good 
who  thought  himself  of  so  little  account. 
He  always  believed  that  he  had  missed 
everything,  wasted  everything,  and  that 
anybody  else  would  have  made  infinitely 
more  out  of  his  life.  He  was  always 
blaming,  scourging  himself.     And  all  the 


64  Essays  from 

time  he  was  the  noblest,  purest,  most  de- 
voted   ' 

"She  stopped.  Her  voice  had  passed 
beyond  her  control.  Elsmere  was  startled 
by  the  feeling  she  showed.  Evidently  he 
had  touched  one  of  the  few  sore  places  in 
this  pure  heart.  It  was  as  though  her 
memory  of  her  father  had  in  it  elements  of 
almost  intolerable  pathos,  as  though  the 
child's  brooding  love  and  loyalty  were  in 
perpetual  protest  even  now  after  this  lapse 
of  years  against  the  verdict  which  an  over- 
scrupulous, despondent  soul  had  pro- 
nounced upon  itself.  Did  she  feel  that  he 
had  gone  uncomforted  out  of  life — even  by 
her — even  by  religion  ?  Was  that  the 
sting  .''  " 

A  little  later  she  gives  the  record  of  his 
last  hours  :  — 

"  '  Catherine  !  Life  is  harder,  the  nar- 
rower way  narrower  than  ever.  I  die'  — 
and  memory  caught  still  the  piteous  long- 
drawn  breath  by  which  the  voice  was 
broken — 'in  much — much  perplexity  about 
manv  things.     You  have  a  clear  soul,  an 


the  "  Guardiany  65 

iron  will.  Strengthen  the  others.  Bring 
them  safe  to  the  day  of  account.'" 

And  then  the  smaller — some  of  them, 
ethically,  very  small — women;  Lady 
Wynnstay,  Mrs.  Fleming,  Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh  ;  above  all,  Robert's  delightful  Irish 
mother,  and  Mrs.  Darcy  ;  how  excellent 
they  are  !  Mrs.  Darcy  we  seem  to  have 
known,  yet  cannot  have  enough  of,  rejoiced 
to  catch  sight  of  her  capital  letter  on  the 
page,  as  we  read  on.  In  truth,  if  a  high 
and  ideal  purpose,  really  learned  in  the 
school  of  Wordsworth  and  among  the 
Westmorland  hills  which  Mrs.  Ward  de- 
scribes so  sympathetically,  with  fitting  dig- 
nity and  truth  of  style,  has  accompanied 
the  author  throughout;  no  less  plain,  per- 
haps more  pleasing  to  some  readers,  is  the 
quiet  humour  which  never  fails  her,  and 
tests,  while  it  relieves,  the  sincerity  of  her 
more  serious  thinking:  — 

"  At  last  Mrs.  Darcy  fluttered  off,  only, 

however,  to  come  hurrying  back  with  little, 

short,  scudding  steps,  to  implore  them  all 

to  come  to  tea  with  her  as  soon  as  possible 

F 


66  Essays  from 

in  the  garden  that  was  her  special  hobby, 
and  in  her  last  new  summer-house. 

"  '  I  build  two  or  three  every  summer,' 
she  said;  'now  there  are  twenty-one! 
Roger  laughs  at  me,'  and  there  was  a  mo- 
mentary bitterness  in  the  little  eerie  face  ; 
*  but  how  can  one  live  without  hobbies  ? 
That's  one — then  I've  two  more.  My 
album — oh,  you  w///all  write  in  my  album, 
won't  you  .''  When  I  was  young — when  I 
was  Maid  of  Honour' — and  she  drew  her- 
self up  slightly — '  everybody  had  albums. 
Even  the  dear  Queen  herself!  I  remember 
how  she  made  M.  Guizot  write  in  it;  some- 
thing quite  stupid,  after  all.  Those  hobbies 
— the  garden  and  the  album — are  q7iite 
harmless,  aren't  they.''  They  hurt  nobody, 
do  they.'''  Her  voice  dropped  a  little, 
with  a  pathetic  expostulating  intonation 
in  it,  as  of  one  accustomed  to  be  re- 
buked." 

Mrs.  Ward's  women,  as  we  have  said, 
are  more  organic,  sympathetic,  and  really 
creative,  than  her  men,  and  make  their 
vitality  evident   by  becoming,  quite  natu- 


the  "  Guardian''  67 

rally,  the  centres  of  very  life-like  and 
dramatic  ^n??//^  of  people,  family  or  social ; 
while  her  men  are  the  very  genii  of  isola- 
tion and  division.  It  is  depressing  to  see 
so  really  noble  a  character  as  Catherine 
soured,  as  we  feel,  and  lowered,  as  time 
goes  on,  from  the  happy  resignation  of  the 
first  volume  (in  which  solemn,  beautiful, 
and  entire,  and  so  very  real,  she  is  like  a 
poem  of  Wordsworth)  down  to  the  mere 
passivity  of  the  third  volume,  and  the 
closing  scene  of  Robert  Elsmere's  days, 
very  exquisitely  as  this  episode  of  unbe- 
lieving yet  saintly  biography  has  been 
conceived  and  executed.  Catherine  cer- 
tainly, for  one,  has  no  profit  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Robert's  improved  gospel.  The 
"  stray  sheep,"  we  think,  has  by  no  means 
always  the  best  of  the  argument,  and  her 
story  is  really  a  sadder,  more  testing  one 
than  his.  Though  both  alike,  we  admit  it 
cordially,  have  a  genuine  sense  of  the 
eternal  moral  charm  of  "  renunciation," 
something  even  of  the  thirst  for  mar- 
trydom,  for  those  wonderful,  inaccessible, 


68  Essays  from 

cold  heights  of  the  "  Imitation,"  eternal  also 
in  their  aesthetic  charm. 

These  characters  and  situations,pleasant 
or  profoundly  interesting,  which  it  is  good 
to  have  come  across,  are  worked  out,  not  in 
rapid  sketches,  nor  by  hazardous  epigram, 
but  more  securely  by  patient  analysis ; 
and  though  we  have  said  that  Mrs.  Ward 
is  most  successful  in  female  portraiture, 
her  own  mind  and  culture  have  an  unmis- 
takable virility  and  grasp  and  scientific 
firmness.  This  indispensable  intellectual 
process,  which  will  be  relished  by  admirers 
of  George  Eliot,  is  relieved  constantly  by 
the  sense  of  a  charming  landscape  back- 
ground, for  the  most  part  English.  Mrs. 
Ward  has  been  a  true  disciple  in  the  school 
of  Wordsworth,  and  really  undergone  its 
influence.  Her  Westmorland  scenery  is 
more  than  a  mere  background  ;  its  spiritual 
and,  as  it  -^^xo., personal  hold  on  persons,  as 
understood  by  the  great  poet  of  the  Lakes, 
is  seen  actually  at  work,  in  the  formation,in 
the  refining,  of  character.  It  has  been  a 
stormy  day  :  — 


the  "  Guardian^  69 

"  Before  him  the  great  hollow  of  High 
Fell  was  just  coming  out  from  the  white 
mists  surging  round  it.  A  shaft  of  sunlight 
lay  across  its  upper  end,  and  he  caught  a 
marvellous  apparition  of  a  sunlit  valley 
hung  in  air,  a  pale  strip  of  blue  above  it,  a 
white  thread  of  stream  wavering  through  it, 
and  all  around  it  and  below  it  the  rolling 
rain-clouds." 

There  is  surely  something  of  "  natural 
magic  "  in  that !  The  wilder  capacity  of 
the  mountains  is  brought  out  especially  in 
a  weird  story  of  a  haunted  girl,  an  episode 
well  illustrating  the  writer's  more  imagina- 
tive psychological  power ;  for,  in  spite  of 
its  quiet  general  tenour,  the  book  has  its 
adroitly  managed  elements  of  sensation — 
witness  the  ghost,  in  which  the  average 
human  susceptibility  to  supernatural  ter- 
rors takes  revenge  on  the  sceptical  Mr. 
Wendover,and  the  love-scene  with  Madame 
de  Netteville,  which,  like  those  other  excit- 
ingpassages,reallyfurthers the  development 
of  the  proper  ethical  interests  of  the  book. 
The  Oxford  episodes  strike  us  as  being  not 


70  Essays  from 

the  author's  strongest  work,  as  being  com- 
paratively conventional,  coming,  as  they  do, 
in  a  book  whose  predominant  note  is  reality. 
Yet  her  sympathetic  command  over,  her 
power  of  evoking,  the  genius  of  places,  is 
clearly  shown  in  the  touches  by  which  she 
brings  out  the  so  well-known  grey  and 
green  of  college  andgarden — toucheswhich 
bring  the  real  Oxford  to  the  mind's  eye 
better  than  any  elaborate  description — for 
the  beauty  of  the  place  itself  resides  also 
in  delicate  touches.  The  book  passes 
indeed,  successively,  through  distinct, 
broadly  conceived  phases  of  scenery, 
which,  becoming  veritable  parts  of  its 
texture,  take  hold  on  the  reader,  as  if  in 
an  actual  sojourn  in  the  places  described. 
Surrey — its  genuine  though  almost  sub- 
urban wildness,  with  the  vicarage  and  the 
wonderful  abode,  above  all,  the  ancient 
library  of  Mr.  Wendover,  all  is  admirably 
done,  the  landscape  naturally  counting  for 
a  good  deal  in  the  development  of  the  pro- 
foundly meditative,  country-loving  souls  of 
Mrs.  Ward's  favourite  characters. 


the  "  Guardian^  71 

Well !  Mrs.  Ward  has  chosen  to  use  all 
these  varied  gifts  and  accomplishments  for 
a  certain  purpose.  Briefly,  Robert  Elsmere, 
a  priest  of  the  Anglican  Church,  marries  a 
very  religious  woman  ;  there  is  the  perfec- 
tion of  "mutual  love;"  at  length  he  has 
doubts  about  "  historic  Christianity  ;  "  he 
gives  up  his  orders  ;  carries  his  learning,  his 
fine  intellect,  his  goodness,  nay,  his  saintli- 
ness,  into  a  kind  of  Unitarianism  ;  the  wife 
becomes  more  intolerant  than  ever  ;  there 
is  a  long  and  faithful  effort  on  both  sides, 
eventually  successful,  on  the  part  of  these 
mentally  divided  people,  to  hold  together  ; 
ending  with  the  hero's  death,  the  genuine 
piety  and  resignation  of  which  is  the  crown- 
ing touch  in  the  author's  able,  learned,  and 
thoroughly  sincere  apology  for  Robert 
Elsmere's  position. 

For  good  or  evil,  the  sort  of  doubts  which 
troubled  Robert  Elsmere  are  no  novelty  in 
literature,  and  we  think  the  main  issue  of 
the  "  religious  question  "  is  not  precisely 
where  Mrs.  Ward  supposes  —  that  it  has 
advanced,  in  more  senses  than  one,  beyond 


72  Essays  from 

the  point  raised  by  Renan's  "Vie  de  Jesus." 
Of  course,  a  man  such  as  Robert  Elsmere 
came  to  be  ought  not  to  be  a  clergyman  of 
the  Anglican  Church.  The  priest  is  still, 
and  will,  we  think,  remain,  one  of  the 
necessary  types  of  humanity  ;  and  he  is 
untrue  to  his  type,  unless,  with  whatever 
inevitable  doubts  in  this  doubting  age,  he 
feels,  on  the  whole,  the  preponderance  in  it 
of  those  influences  which  make  for  faith. 
It  is  his  triumph  to  achieve  as  much  faith 
as  possible  in  an  age  of  negation.  Doubt- 
less, it  is  part  of  the  ideal  of  the  Anglican 
Church  that,  under  certain  safeguards,  it 
should  find  room  for  latitudinarians  even 
among  its  clergy.  Still,  with  these,  as  with 
all  other  genuine  priests,  it  is  the  positive 
not  the  negative  result  that  justifies  the 
position.  We  have  little  patience  with 
those  liberal  clergy  who  dwell  on  nothing 
else  than  the  difficulties  of  faith  and  the 
propriety  of  concession  to  the  opposite 
force.  Yes  !  Robert  Elsmere  was  certainly 
right  in  ceasing  to  be  a  clergyman.  But  it 
strikes  us  as  a  blot  on  his    philosophical 


the  "  Guardian.^'  73 

pretensions  that  he  should  have  been  both 
so  late  in  perceiving  the  difficulty,  and  then 
so  sudden  and  trenchant  in  dealing  with  so 
great  and  complex  a  question.  Had  he  pos- 
sessed a  perfectly  philosophic  or  scientific 
temper  he  would  have  hesitated.  This  is 
not  the  place  to  discuss  in  detail  the  theo- 
logical position  very  ably  and  seriously 
argued  by  Mrs.  Ward.  All  we  can  say  is 
that,  one  by  one,  Elsmere's  objections  may 
be  met  by  considerations  of  the  same^^wwj, 
and  not  less  equal  weight,  relatively  to  a 
world  so  obscure,  in  its  origin  and  issues,  as 
that  in  which  we  live. 

Robert  Elsmere  was  a  type  of  a  large 
class  of  minds  which  cannot  be  sure  that 
the  sacred  story  is  true.  It  is  philosophical, 
doubtless,  and  a  duty  to  the  intellect  to 
recognize  our  doubts,  to  locate  them, 
perhaps  to  give  them  practical  effect.  It 
may  be  also  a  moral  duty  to  do  this.  But 
then  there  is  also  a  large  class  of  minds 
which  cannot  be  sure  it  is  false — minds  of 
very  various  degrees  of  conscientiousness 
and  intellectual  power,  up  to  the  highest. 


74  Essays  from 

They  will  think  those  who  are  quite  sure  it 
is  false  unphilosophical  through  lack  of 
doubt.  For  their  part,  they  make  allowance 
in  their  scheme  of  life  foragreat  possibility, 
and  with  some  of  them  that  bare  concession 
of  possibility  (the  subject  of  it  being  what  it 
is)  becomes  the  most  important  fact  in  the 
world.  The  recognition  of  it  straightway 
opens  wide  the  door  to  hope  and  love  ; 
and  such  persons  are,  as  we  fancy  they 
always  will  be,  the  nucleus  of  a  Church. 
Their  particular  phase  of  doubt,  of  philo- 
sophic uncertainty,  has  been  the  secret  of 
millions  of  good  Christians,  multitudes  of 
worthy  priests.  They  knit  themselves  to 
believers,  in  various  degrees,  of  all  ages. 
As  against  the  purely  negative  action  of 
the  scientific  spirit,  the  high-pitched  Grey, 
the  theistic  Elsmere,  the  "ritualistic  priest," 
the  quaint  Methodist  Fleming,  both  so 
admirably  sketched,  present  perhaps  no 
unconquerable  differences.  The  questionof 
the  day  is  not  between  one  and  another  of 
these,  but  in  another  sort  of  opposition.well 
defined  by  Mrs.  Ward  herself,  between — 


the  "  Guardianr  75 

"Two  estimates  of  life — the  estimate 
which  is  the  offspring  of  the  scientific  spirit, 
and  which  is  for  ever  making  the  visible 
world  fairer  and  more  desirable  in  mortal 
eyes  ;  and  the  estimate  of  Saint  Augustine." 

To  us,  the  belief  in  God,  in  goodness  at 
all,  in  the  story  of  Bethlehem,  does  not  rest 
on  evidence  so  diverse  in  character  and 
force  as  Mrs.  Ward  supposes.  At  his  death 
Elsmere  has  started  what  to  us  would  be  a 
most  unattractive  place  of  worship,  where 
he  preaches  an  admirable  sermon  on  the 
purely  human  aspect  of  the  life  of  Christ. 
But  we  think  there  would  be  very  few  such 
sermons  in  the  new  church  or  chapel,  for 
the  interest  of  that  life  could  hardly  be 
very  varied,  when  all  such  sayings  as  that 
"  though  He  was  rich,  for  our  sakes  He 
became  poor"  have  ceased  to  be  applicable 
to  it.  It  is  the  infinite  nature  of  Christ 
which  has  led  to  such  diversities  of  genius 
in  preaching  as  St.  Francis,  and  Taylor, 
and  Wesley. 

And  after  all  we  fear  we  have  been  unjust 
to  Mrs.  Ward's    work.     If  so,  we  should 


76    Essays  from  the  "  Guardian^ 

read  once  more,  and  advise  our  readers  to 
read,  the  profoundly  thought  and  delicately 
felt  chapter — chapter  forty-three  in  her 
third  volume — in  which  she  describes 
the  final  spiritual  reunion,  on  a  basis  of 
honestly  diverse  opinion,  of  the  husband 
and  wife.  Her  view,  we  think,  could  hardly 
have  been  presented  more  attractively.  For 
ourselves  we  can  only  thank  herfor  pleasure 
and  profit  in  the  reading  of  her  book,  which 
has  refreshed  actually  the  first  and  deepest 
springs  of  feeling,  while  it  has  charmed  the 
literary  sense. 


V. 

THEIR  MAJESTIES' 

SERVANTS. 

June  27TH,  1888. 


THEIR  MAJESTIES' 
SERVANTS. 

"Annals  of  the  English  Stage,fromThomas 
Betterton  to  Edmund  Kean."  By  Dr. 
Doran,  F.S.A.  Edited  and  revised  by- 
Robert  W.  Lowe.     John  C.  Nimmo. 

HOSE  who  care  for  the  history  of 
the  drama  as  a  branch  of  litera- 
ture, or  for  the  history  of  that 
general  development  of  human  manners 
of  which  the  stage  has  been  always  an 
element  and  a  very  lively  measure  or  index, 
will  be  grateful  to  Mr.  Lowe  for  this  re- 
vised and  charmingly  illustrated  edition  of 
Dr.  Doran's  pleasant  old  book.  Three 
hundred  years  and  more  of  a  singularly 
varied  and  vivacious  sort  of  history  !  —  it 


8o  Essays  from 

was  a  bold  thing  to  undertake  ;  and  Dr. 
Doran  did  his  work  well  —  did  it  with 
adequate  "love."  These  "Annals  of  the 
English  Stage,  from  Thomas  Betterton  to 
Edmund  Kean,"  are  full  of  the  colours  of 
life  in  their  most  emphatic  and  motley 
contrasts,  as  is  natural  in  proportion  as  the 
stage  itself  concentrates  and  artificially 
intensifies  the  character  and  conditions  of 
ordinary  life.  The  long  story  of  "  Their 
Majesties'  Servants,"  treated  thus,  becomes 
from  age  to  age  an  agreeable  addition  to 
those  personal  memoirs — Evelyn's,  and  the 
like — which  bring  the  influence  and  charm 
of  a  visible  countenance  to  the  dry  tenour 
of  ordinary  history,  and  the  critic's  work 
upon  it  naturally  becomes,  in  the  first  place, 
a  mere  gathering  of  some  of  the  flowers 
which  lie  so  abundantly  scattered  here  and 
there. 

A  history  of  the  English  stage  must 
necessarily  be  in  part  a  history  of  one  of 
the  most  delightful  of  subjects — old  Lon- 
don, of  which  from  time  to  time  we  catch 
extraordinary    glimpses    in    Dr.    Doran's 


the  "  Guardian^  8i 

pages.  From  1682  to  1695,  as  if  the  Re- 
storation had  not  come,  there  was  but  one 
theatre  in  London.  In  Charles  I.'s  time 
Shoreditch  was  the  dramatic  quarter  of 
London  par  excellence :  — 

"The  popular  taste  was  not  only  there 
directed  towards  the  stage,  but  it  was  a 
district  wherein  many  actors  dwelt,  and 
consequently  died.  The  baptismal  re- 
gister of  St.  Leonard's,  Shoreditch,  con- 
tains Christian  names  which  appear  to 
have  been  chosen  with  reference  to  the 
heroines  of  Shakespeare  ;  and  the  record 
of  burials  bears  the  name  of  many  an  old 
actor  of  mark  whose  remains  now  lie  with- 
in the  churchyard." 

Earlier  and  later,  the  Surrey  side  of  the 
Thames  was  the  favourite  locality  for  play- 
houses. The  Globe  was  there,  and  the 
Bear-garden,  represented  in  Mr.  Lowe's 
luxurious  new  edition  by  delightful  wood- 
cuts. For  this  new  edition  adds  to  the 
original  merits  of  the  work  the  very  sub- 
stantial charm  of  abundant  illustrations, 
first-rate  in  subject  and  execution,  and  of 
G 


82  Essays  from 

three  kinds — copper-plate  likenesses  of 
actors  and  other  personages  connected  with 
theatrical  history  ;  a  series  of  delicate, 
picturesque,  highly  detailed  woodcuts  of 
theatrical  topography,  chiefly  the  little  old 
theatres;  and,  by  way  of  tail-pieces  to  the 
chapters,  a  second  series  of  woodcuts  of  a 
vigour  and  reality  of  information,  within 
very  limited  compass,  which  make  one 
think  of  Callot  and  the  German  "  little 
masters,"  depicting  Garrick  and  other 
famous  actors  in  their  favourite  scenes. 

In  the  vignettes  of  the  Bear-garden  and 
the  Swan  Theatre,  for  instance,  the  artist 
has  managed  to  throw  over  his  minute 
plate  a  wonderful  air  of  pleasantness,  a 
light  which,  though  very  delicate,  is  very 
theatrical.  The  river  and  its  tiny  craft, 
the  little  gabled  houses  of  the  neighbour- 
hood, with  a  garden  or  two  dropped  in, 
tell  delightfully  in  the  general  eftect.  They 
are  worthy  to  rank  with  Cruikshank's  illus- 
trations of  "  Jack  Sheppard  "  and  the 
"  Tower  of  London,"  as  mementoes  of  the 
little    old    smokeless    London    before  the 


the  "  Giiardianr  83 

century  of  Johnson,  though  that,  too,  as 
Dr.  Doran  bears  witness,  knew  what  fogs 
could  be.  Then  there  is  the  Fortune 
Theatre  near  Cripplegate,  and,  most  charm- 
ing of  all,  two  views — street  and  river 
fronts — the  Duke's  Theatre,  DorsetGarden, 
inFleet  Street,designed  by  Wren,  decorated 
by  Gibbons — graceful,  na'ive,  dainty,  like 
the  work  of  a  very  refined  Palladio,  work- 
ing minutely,  perhaps  more  delicately  than 
at  Vicenza,  in  the  already  crowded  city  on 
the  Thames  side. 

The  portraits  of  actors  and  other  thea- 
trical celebrities  range  from  Elizabeth, 
from  the  melodramatic  costumes  and  faces 
of  the  contemporaries  of  Shakespeare,  to 
the  conventional  costumes,  the  rotund  ex- 
pression, of  the  age  of  the  Georges,  mask- 
ing a  power  of  imaginative  impersonation 
probably  unknown  in  Shakespeare's  day. 
Edward  Burbage,  like  Shakespeare's  own 
portrait,  is,  we  venture  to  think,  a  trifle 
stolid.  Field — Nathaniel  Field,  author  of 
"  The  Fatal  Dowry,"  and  an  actor  of  repu- 
tation— in  his  singular  costume,  and  with 


84  Essays  from 

a  face  of  perhaps  not  quite  reassuring 
subtlety,  might  pass  for  the  original  of 
those  Italian,  or  Italianized,  voluptuaries 
in  sin  which  pleased  the  fancy  of  Shake- 
speare's age.  Mixed  up  with  many  strik- 
ing, thoroughly  dramatic  physiognomies,  it 
must  be  confessed  that  some  of  these  por- 
traits scarcely  help  at  all  to  explain  the 
power  of  the  players  to  whom  they  be- 
longed. That,  perhaps,  is  what  we  might 
naturally  expect ;  the  more,  in  proportion 
as  the  dramatic  art  is  a  matter  in  which 
many  very  subtle  and  indirect  channels 
to  men's  sympathy  are  called  into  play. 
Edward  Alleyn,  from  the  portrait  preserved 
at  his  noble  foundation  at  Dulwich,  like  a 
fine  Holbein,  figures,  in  blent  strength  and 
delicacy,  as  a  genial,  or  perhaps  jovial, 
soul,  finding  time  for  sentiment, — Prynne 
(included,  we  suppose,  in  this  company, 
like  the  skull  at  the  feast)  as  a  likable  if 
somewhat  melancholic  young  man  ;  while 
Garrick  and  his  wife  playing  cards,  after 
Zoffany,  present  a  pair  of  just  very  nice 
young  people.  On  the  other  hand,  the  tail- 


the  ''  Guardian  r  85 

pieces,  chiefly  devoted  to  Garrick,  prove 
what  a  wonderful  natural  variety  there  was 
in  Garrick's  soul,  and  are  well  worth  com- 
parative study.  Noticeable  again,  among 
the  whole-plate  portraits,  is  the  thoroughly 
reassuring  countenance  of  Steele,  the  sin- 
gularly fine  heads  of  John,  Charles,  and 
Fanny  Kemble,  while  the  certainly  plain, 
pinched  countenance  of  William  Davenant 
reminds  one  of  Charles  Kean,  and  might 
well  have  lighted  up,  as  did  his,  when  the 
soul  came  into  it,  into  power  and  charm,  as 
the  speaking  eyes  assure  us  even  in  its 
repose. 

The  Renaissance  inherited  the  old  foolish 
prejudice  of  Roman  times,  when,  although 
thewritersof  plays  were  the  intimatefriends 
of  emperors,  the  actors  were  thought  in- 
famous. Still,  on  the  whole,  actors  fared 
better  in  England  thaninRomanist  France, 
where  Moliere  was  buried  with  less  cere- 
mony than  a  favourite  dog.  Very  different 
was  the  treatment  of  the  eminent  Mrs. 
Oldfield,  who  died  in  1730  :  — 

"  Poor  '  Narcissa '  after  death  (says  Wal- 


86  Essays  from 

pole)  was  attired  in  a  Holland  nightdress, 
with  tuckerand  double  ruffles  of  Brunswick 
lace,of  which  latter  material  she  also  wore  a 
headdress,  and  a  pair  of  new  kid  gloves. 
In  this  dress  the  deceased  actress  received 
such  honour  as  actress  never  received  be- 
fore, nor  has  ever  received  since.  The  lady 
lay  in  state  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber. 
Had  she  been  really  a  queen  the  public 
could  not  have  thronged  more  eagerly  to 
the  spectacle  ;  and  after  the  lying  in  state 
there  was  a  funeral  of  as  much  ceremony 
as  has  been  observed  at  the  obsequies  of 
many  a  queen.  There  were  anthems  and 
prayers  and  a  sermon  ;  and  Dr.  Parker, 
who  officiated,  remarked,  when  all  was  over, 
to  a  few  particular  friends,  and  with  some 
equivocation,  as  it  seems  to  me,  that  he 
*  buried  her  very  willingly,  and  with  much 
satisfaction.'  " 

Yet  even  in  England  players  had  need 
of  powerful  protectors,  "  Wit,"  said  Ches- 
terfield, opposing  an  unjust  licensing  Act, 
"  Wit,  my  lords !  is  the  property  of  those 
who  have  it,  and  too  often  the  only  pro- 


the  "  Guardian r  87 

perty  they  have  to  depend  on."  Wit,  in 
deed,  with  the  other  gifts  that  make  good 
company,  has  largely  gone  with  theatrical 
talents,  too  often  little  to  the  benefit  of  the 
gifted  persons.  Theatrical  society,  rather 
than  the  theatre,  has  made  the  lives  of 
actors  as  we  see  them  in  these  volumes,  in 
many  cases  so  tragic,  even  sordidly  tragic. 
If  misery  and  madness  abound  in  stage 
life,  so  also  does  an  indomitable  cheerful- 
ness, always  at  least  a  cheerful  countenance. 
Dr.  Doran's  book  abounds,  as  might  be 
expected,  with  admirable  impromptus  and 
the  like  ;  one  might  collect  a  large  posy  of 
them.  Foote,  seeing  a  sweep  on  a  blood- 
horse,  remarked,  "  There  goes  Warburton 
on  Shakespeare  !  "  When  he  heard  that 
the  Rockingham  Cabinet  was  fatigued  to 
death  and  at  its  wits'  end,  he  exclaimed 
that  it  could  not  have  been  the  length  of 
the  journey  which  had  tired  it.  Again, 
when  Lord  Carmarthen,  at  a  party,  told 
him  his  handkerchief  was  hanging  from 
his  pocket,  Foote  replaced  it  with  a  "  Thank 
you,   my    lord  ;    you    know    the    company 


88  Essays  from 

better  than  I."  Jevon,  a  century  earlier, 
was  in  the  habit  of  taking  great  Hberties 
with  authors  and  audience.  He  made 
Settle  half  mad  and  the  house  ecstatic 
when  having,  as  Lycurgus,  Prince  of  China, 
to  "fall  on  his  sword,"  he  placed  it  flat 
on  the  stage,  and,  falling  over  it,  "  died," 
according  to  the  direction  of  the  acting 
copy.  Quaint  enough,  but  certainly  no  in- 
stance of  anybody's  wit,  is  the  account  of 
how  a  French  translation  of  a  play  of 
Vanbrugh — not  architect  of  Blenheim  only, 
but  accomplished  in  many  other  ways  — 
appeared  at  the  Odeon,  in  1862,  with  all 
fitting  raptures,  as  a  posthumous  work  of 
Voltaire  recently  discovered.  The  Vol- 
tairean  wit  was  found  as  "delightful  in  this 
as  in  the  last  century." 

Of  Shakespeare  on  the  stage  Dr.  Doran 
has  a  hundred  curious  things  to  note:  — 
that  Richard  the  Third,  for  instance,  who 
has  retained  a  so  unflattering  possession  of 
the  stage,  was  its  "  first  practically  useful 
patron."  We  see  Queen  Elizabeth  full  of 
misgiving  at  a  difficult  time  at  the  popu- 


the  "  Guardianr  89 

larity  of  Richard  the  Second  : — "  The  depo- 
sition and  death  of  King  Richard  the 
Second."  "  Tongues  whisper  to  the  Queen 
that  this  play  is  part  of  a  great  plot  to 
teach  her  subjects  how  to  murder  kings." 
It  is  perhaps  not  generally  known  that 
Charles  Shakespeare,  William's  brother, 
survived  till  the  Restoration.  Oldys  says, 
d  propos  of  the  restoration  of  the  stage  at 
that  time  :  — 

"  The  actors  were  greedily  inquisitive 
into  every  little  circumstance,  more  espe- 
cially in  Shakespeare's  dramatic  character, 
which  his  brother  could  relate  of  him.  But 
he,  it  seems,  was  so  stricken  in  years,  and 
possibly  his  memory  so  weakened  by  in- 
firmities, that  he  could  give  them  but  little 
light  into  their  inquiries ;  and  all  that 
could  be  recollected  from  him  of  his  brother 
Will  in  that  station  was  the  faint,  general, 
and  almost  lost  ideas  he  had  of  having  once 
seen  him  act  a  part  in  one  of  his  own 
comedies,  wherein  being  present  to  per- 
sonate a  decrepit  old  man,  he  wore  a  long 
beard,  and  appeared  so  weak  and  drooping 


90  Essays  from 

and  unable  to  walk,  that  he  was  forced  to 
be  supported  and  carried  by  another  person 
to  a  table,  at  which  he  was  seated  among 
some  company  who  were  eating,  and  one  of 
them  sang  a  song." 

This  description  applies  to  old  Adam  in 
"  As  You  Like  It."  Many  are  the  evidences 
that  Shakespeare's  reputation  had  from 
time  to  time  a  struggle  to  maintain  itself. 
James  Howard,  in  Pepys's  day  — 

"  Belonged  to  the  faction  which  affected 
to  believe  that  there  was  no  popular  love 
for  Shakespeare,  to  render  whom  palatable 
he  arranged  '  Romeo  and  Juliet '  for  the 
stage,  with  a  double  denouement  —  one 
serious,  the  other  hilarious.  If  your  heart 
were  too  sensitive  to  bear  the  deaths  of  the 
loving  pair,  you  had  only  to  go  on  the 
succeeding  afternoon  to  see  them  wedded, 
and  set  upon  the  way  of  a  well-assured 
domestic  felicity." 

In  1678  Rymer  asserted  (was  it  un- 
designedly a  true  testimony  to  the  acting 
of  his  time  i*)  that  Shakespeare  had  depicted 
Brutus  and  Cassius  as  "  Jack  Puddins." 


the  "  Guardiajiy  91 

Here,  as  in  many  another  detail,  we  are 
reminded,  of  course,  of  the  difference  be- 
tween our  own  and  past  times  in  mimic  as 
in  real  life.  For  Prynne  one  of  the  great 
horrors  of  the  stage  was  the  introduction  of 
actresses  from  France  by  Henrietta  Maria, 
to  take  the  place  of  young  male  actors  of 
whom  Dr.  Doran  has  some  interesting 
notices.  Who  the  lady  was  who  first  trod 
the  stage  as  a  professional  actress  is  not 
known,  but  her  part  was  Desdemona.  And 
yet  it  was  long  after  that  — 

"Edward  Kynaston  died  (in  17 12).  He 
lies  buried  in  the  churchyard  of  St.  Paul's, 
Covent  Garden.  If  not  the  greatest  actor 
of  his  day,  Kynaston  was  the  greatest  of 
the  '  boy-actresses.'  So  exalted  was  his 
reputation  '  that,'  says  Downes,  '  it  has 
since  been  disputable  among  the  judicious, 
whether  any  woman  that  succeeded  him 
so  sensibly  touched  the  audience  as  he.'  " 

In  Charles  II. 's  time  it  was  a  custom  to 
return  the  price  of  admission  to  all  persons 
who  left  the  theatre  before  the  close  of  the 
first  act.   Consequently,  many  shabby  per- 


92  Essays  from 

sons  were  wont  to  force  their  way  in  with- 
out paying,  on  the  plea  that  they  did  not 
intend  to  remain  beyond  the  time  Hmited. 
Hence  much  noisy  contention,  to  the  great 
discomfort  even  of  Royalty.  The  brawl- 
ing, drinking  habits  of  the  time  were  even 
more  discomforting.  An  angry  word,  passed 
one  April  evening  of  1682  between  the  son 
of  Sir  Edward  Bering  and  a  hot-blooded 
young  Welshman,  led  to  recrimination  and 
sword-drawing.  The  two  young  fellows 
not  having  elbow-room  in  the  pit, clambered 
on  to  the  stage,  and  fought  there,  to  the 
greater  comfort  of  the  audience,  and  with 
a  more  excited  fury  on  the  part  of  the 
combatants.  The  mingling  of  the  public 
with  the  players  was  a  practice  which  so 
annoyed  the  haughty  French  actor,  Baron, 
that  to  suggest  to  the  audience  the  ab- 
surdity of  it,  he  would  turn  his  back  on 
them  for  a  whole  act,  and  play  to  the 
audience  on  the  stage.  Sometimes  the 
noise  was  so  loud  that  an  actor's  voice 
would  scarcely  be  heard.  It  was  about 
1 7 10    that    the    word    encore  was    intro- 


the  "  Guardian  y  93 

duced  at  the  operatic  performances  in 
the  Haymarket,  and  very  much  objected 
to  by  plain-going  Englishmen.  It  was 
also  the  custom  of  some  who  desired  the 
repetition  of  "a  song  to  cry  Altra  volta  ! 
A  lira  volta  ! 

Even  indirectly  the  history  of  the  stage 
illustrates  life,  and  affords  many  unex- 
pected lights  onhistoricalcharacters.  Oliver 
Cromwell,  though  he  despised  the  stage, 
could  condescend  to  laugh  at,  and  with, 
men  of  less  dignity  than  actors.  Buffoonery 
was  not  entirely  expelled  from  his  other- 
wise grave  court.  Oxford  and  Drury  Lane 
itself  dispute  the  dignity  of  giving  birth  to 
Nell  Gwynne  with  Hereford,  where  a  mean 
house  is  still  pointed  out  as  the  first  home 
of  this  mother  of  a  line  of  dukes,  whose 
great-grandson  was  to  occupy  the  neigh- 
bouring palace  as  Bishop  of  Hereford  for 
forty  years.  At  her  burial  in  St.  Martin's- 
in-the-Fields, Archbishop  Tenison  preached 
the  sermon.  When  this  was  subsequently 
made  the  ground  of  exposing  him  to  the 
reproof  of  Queen  Mary,  she  remarked  that 


94  Essays  from 

the  good  doctor,  no  doubt,  had  said  nothing 
but  what  the  facts  authorized. 

"Who  should  act  genteel  comedy  per- 
fectly," asks  Wal  pole,  "but  people  of  fashion, 
that  have  sense  ? "  And,  in  truth,  the 
seventeenth  century  gave  many  ladies  to 
the  stage,  Mrs.Barry  being  the  most  famous 
of  them.  Like  many  eminent  actors,  she 
was  famous  for  the  way  in  which  she  would 
utter  one  single  expression  in  a  play.  Dr. 
Doran  gives  some  curious  instances  from 
later  actors.  "  What  mean  my  grieving 
subjects?"  uttered  in  the  character  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  was  invested  by  her  with  such 
emphatic  grace  and  dignity  as  to  call  up 
murmurs  of  approbation  which  swelled  into 
thunders  of  applause.  Her  noble  head  is 
here  engraved  after  Kneller,  like  the  head 
of  a  magnificent  visionary  man. 

Should  we  really  care  for  the  greatest 
actors  of  the  past  could  we  have  them 
before  us  .-*  Should  we  find  them  too  dif- 
ferent from  our  accent  of  thought,of  feeling, 
of  speech,  in  a  thousand  minute  particulars 
which  are  of  the  essence  of  all  three  .-*  Dr. 


the  "  Guardian^  95 

Doran's  long  and  interesting  records  of  the 
triumphs  of  Garrick.and  other  less  familiar, 
but  in  their  day  hardly  less  astonishing, 
players,  do  not  relieve  one  of  the  doubt. 
Garrick  himself,  as  sometimes  happens 
with  people  who  have  been  the  subject  of 
much  anecdote  and  other  conversation, 
here  as  elsewhere,  bears  no  very  distinct 
figure.  One  hardly  sees  the  wood  for  the 
trees.  On  the  other  hand,  the  account  of 
Betterton,  "  perhaps  the  greatest  of  English 
actors,"  is  delightfully  fresh.  That  intimate 
friend  of  Dryden,  Tillotson,  Pope,  who 
executed  a  copy  of  the  actor's  portrait  by 
Kneller  which  is  still  extant,  was  worthy 
of  their  friendship  ;  his  career  brings  out 
the  best  elements  in  stage  life.  The  stage 
in  these  volumes  presents  itself  indeed  not 
merely  as  a  mirror  of  life,  but  as  an  illus- 
tration of  the  utmost  intensity  of  life,  in  the 
fortunes  and  characters  of  the  players. 
Ups  and  downs,  generosity,  dark  fates,  the 
most  delicate  goodness,  have  nowhere  been 
more  prominent  than  in  the  private  exist- 
ence of  those  devoted  to  the  public  mimicry 


96    Essays  from  the  "  Guardian^ 

of  men  and  women.  Contact  with  the 
stage,  almost  throughout  its  history,  pre- 
sents itself  as  a  kind  of  touchstone,to  bring 
out  the  bizarrerie,  the  theatrical  tricks  and 
contrasts,  of  the  actual  world. 


VI. 
WORDSWORTH. 

February  27TH,  1889. 


H 


WORDSWORTH. 

"  The  Complete  Poetical  Works  of  William 
Wordsworth."  With  an  Introduction 
by  John  Morley.     Macmillans. 

"The  Recluse."  By  William  Words- 
worth.    Macmillans. 

"  Selections  from  Wordsworth."  By  Wil- 
liam Knight  and  other  Members  of  the 
Wordsworth  Society.  With  Preface  and 
Notes.     Kegan  Paul. 

HE  appearance,  so  close  to  each 
other,  of  Professor  Knight's  care- 
ful and  elaborately  annotated 
"  Selections  from  William  Wordsworth," 
of  Messrs.  Macmillan's  collected  edition 
of  the  poet's  works,  with  the  first  book  of 
the  "  Recluse,"  now  published  for  the  first 
time,  and  of  an  excellent  introductory  essay 


lOO  Essays  from 

by  Mr.  John  Morley,  forms  a  welcome  proof 
that  the  study  of  the  most  philosophic  of 
English  poets  is  increasing  among  us. 
Surely  nothing  could  be  better,  hardly  any- 
thing more  directly  fitted  than  a  careful 
reading  of  Wordsworth,  to  counteract  the 
faults  and  offences  of  our  busy  generation, 
in  regard  both  to  thought  and  taste,  and  to 
remind  people,  amid  the  enormous  expan- 
sion, at  the  present  time,  of  all  that  is 
material  and  mechanical  in  life,  of  the 
essential  value,  the  permanent  ends,  of  life 
itself.  In  the  collected  edition  the  poems 
are  printed  with  the  dates,  so  far  as  can  be 
ascertained,  in  the  order  of  their  composi- 
tion— an  arrangement  which  has  indisput- 
able recommendations  for  the  student  of 
Wordsworth's  genius  ;  though  the  former 
method  of  distributing  his  work  into  large 
groups  of  subject  had  its  value,  as  throwing 
light  upon  his  poetic  motives,  and  more 
especially  as  coming  from  himself. 

In  his  introductory  essay  Mr.  Morley  has 
dwelt  strongly  on  the  circumstance  of 
Wordsworth's  remarkable  personal  happi- 


the  "  Guardian^  loi 

ness,  as  having  had  much  to  do  with  the 
physiognomy  of  his  poetic  creation  —  a 
calm,  irresistible,  well-being — almost  mystic 
in  character,  and  yet  doubtless  connected 
with  physical  conditions.  Long  ago  De 
Ouincey  noted  it  as  a  strongly  determinant 
fact  in  Wordsworth's  literary  career,  point- 
ing, at  the  same  time,  to  his  remarkable 
good  luck  also,  on  the  material  side  of  life. 
The  poet's  own  flawless  temperament,  his 
fine  mountain  atmosphere  of  mind  (so  to 
express  it),  had  no  doubt  a  good  deal  to  do 
with  that.  What  a  store  of  good  fortune, 
what  a  goodly  contribution  to  happiness, 
in  the  very  best  sense  of  that  term,  is  really 
involved  in  a  cheerful,  grateful,  physical 
temperament  ;  especially,  in  the  case  of  a 
poet  —  a  great  poet  —  who  will,  of  course, 
have  to  face  the  appropriate  trials  of  a 
great  poet. 

Coleridge  and  other  English  critics  at 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century  had  a 
great  deal  to  say  concerning  a  psychological 
distinction  of  much  importance  (as  it  ap- 
peared to  them)  between  X\\^  fancy  and  the 


I02  Essays  from 

imagination.  Stripped  of  a  great  deal  of 
somewhat  obscure  metaphysical  theory, 
this  distinction  reduced  itself  to  the  cer- 
tainly vital  one, with  which  all  true  criticism 
more  or  less  directly  has  to  do,  between  the 
lower  and  higher  degrees  of  intensity  in  the 
poet's  conception  of  his  subject,  and  his 
concentration  of  himself  upon  his  work. 
It  was  Wordsworth  who  made  most  of  this 
distinction,  assuming  it  as  the  basis  for  the 
final  classification  (abandoned,  as  we  said, 
in  the  new  edition)  of  his  poetical  writ- 
ings. And  nowhere  is  the  distinction  more 
realizable  than  in  Wordsworth's  own  work. 
For  though  what  may  be  called  professed 
Wordsworthians,  including  Matthew  Ar- 
nold, found  a  value  in  all  that  remains  of 
him — could  read  anything  he  wrote,  "  even 
the  'Thanksgiving  Ode,'  —  everything,  I 
think,  except  'Vaudracour  and  Julia,'"  — 
yet  still  the  decisiveness  of  such  selections 
as  those  made  by  Arnold  himself,  and  now 
by  Professor  Knight,  hint  at  a  certain  very 
obvious  difference  of  level  in  his  poetic 
work. 


tJie  "  Guardian^  103 

This  perpetual  suggestion  of  an  absolute 
duality  between  his  lower  and  higher 
moods,  and  the  poetic  work  produced  in 
them,  stimulating  the  reader  to  look  below 
the  immediate  surface  of  his  poetry,  makes 
the  study  of  Wordsworth  an  excellent  exer- 
cise for  the  training  of  those  mental  powers 
in  us,  which  partake  both  of  thought  and 
imagination.  It  begets  in  those  who  fall 
in  with  him  at  the  right  moment  of  their 
spiritual  development,  a  habit  of  reading 
between  the  lines,  a  faith  in  the  effect  of 
concentration  and  collectedness  of  mind  on 
the  right  appreciation  of  poetry,  the  expec- 
tation that  what  is  really  worth  having  in 
the  poetic  order  will  involve,  on  their  part, 
a  certain  discipline  of  the  temper  not  less 
than  of  the  intellect.  Wordsworth  meets 
them  with  the  assurance  that  he  has  much 
to  give  them,  and  of  a  very  peculiar  kind, 
if  they  will  follow  a  certain  difficult  way, 
and  seems  to  possess  the  secret  of  some 
special  mental  illumination.  To  follow 
that  way  is  an  initiation,  by  which  they  will 
become  able  to  distinguish,  in  art,  speech, 


I04  Assays  from 

feeling,  manners,  in  men  and  life  generally, 
what  is  genuine,  animated,  and  expressive 
from  what  is  only  conventional  and  deriva- 
tive, and  therefore  inexpressive. 

A  very  intimate  sense  of  the  expressive- 
ness of  outward  things,  which  ponders, 
listens,  penetrates,  where  the  earlier,  less 
developed  consciousness  passed  lightly  by, 
is  an  important  element  in  the  general 
temper  of  our  modern  poetry.  Critics  of 
literary  history  have  again  and  again  re- 
marked upon  it  ;  it  is  a  characteristic  which 
reveals  itself  in  many  different  forms,  but 
is  strongest  and  most  sympathetic  in  what 
is  strongest  and  most  serious  in  modern 
literature ;  it  is  exemplified  by  writers  as 
unlike  Wordsworth  as  the  French  roman- 
ticist poets.  As  a  curious  chapter  in  the 
history  of  the  human  mind,  its  growth 
might  be  traced  from  Rousseau  and  St. 
Pierre  to  Chateaubriand,  from  Chateau- 
briand to  Victor  Hugo  ;  it  has  no  doubt 
some  obscure  relationship  to  those  pan- 
theistic theories  which  have  greatly  occu- 
pied people's  minds  in  many  modern  read- 


the  "  Guardian.''  105 

ings  of  philosophy ;  it  makes  as  much 
difference  between  the  modern  and  the 
earlier  landscape  art  as  there  is  between 
the  roughly  outlined  masks  of  a  Byzantine 
mosaic  and  a  portrait  by  Reynolds  or 
Romney.  Of  this  new  landscape  sense  the 
poetry  of  Wordsworth  is  the  elementary 
and  central  exposition  ;  he  is  more  exclu- 
sively occupied  with  its  development  than 
any  other  poet.  Wordsworth's  own  char- 
acter, as  we  have  already  observed,  was 
dominated  by  a  certain  contentment,  a  sort 
of  naturally  religious  placidity,  not  often 
found  in  union  with  a  poetic  sensibility  so 
active  as  his  ;  and  this  gentle  sense  of  well- 
being  was  favourable  to  the  quiet,  habitual 
observation  of  the  inanimate,  or  imperfectly 
animate,  world.  His  life  of  eighty  placid 
years  was  almost  without  what,  with  most 
human  beings,  count  for  incidents.  His 
flight  from  the  active  world,  so  genially 
celebrated  in  this  newly  published  poem  of 
"The  Recluse;"  his  flight  to  the  Vale  of 
Grasmere,  like  that  of  some  pious  youth  to 
the  Chartreuse,  is  the  most  marked  event 


io6  Essays  fro7n 

of  his  existence.  His  life's  changes  are 
almost  entirely  inward  ones  ;  it  falls  into 
broad,  untroubled,  perhaps  somewhat 
monotonous,  spaces ;  his  biographers  have 
very  little  to  tell.  What  it  really  most 
resembled,  different  as  its  superficies  may 
look,  is  the  career  of  those  early  mediaeval 
religious  artists,  who,  precisely  because 
their  souls  swarmed  with  heavenly  visions, 
passed  their  fifty  or  sixty  years  in  tranquil, 
systematic  industry,  seemingly  with  no 
thoughts  beyond  it.  This  placid  life  deve- 
loped in  Wordsworth,  to  an  extraordinary 
degree,  an  innate  sensibility  to  natural 
sights  and  sounds  —  the  flower  and  its 
shadow  on  the  stone,  the  cuckoo  and  its 
echo.  The  poem  of  "  Resolution  and  Inde- 
pendence "  is  a  storehouse  of  such  records  ; 
for  its  fulness  of  lovely  imagery  it  may  be 
compared  to  Keats's  "  Saint  Agnes'  Eve." 
To  read  one  of  his  greater  pastoral  poems 
for  the  first  time  is  like  a  day  spent  in 
a  new  country  ;  the  memory  is  crowded 
for  a  while  with  its  precise  and  vivid  in- 
cidents :  — 


the  "  Guardiany  T07 

"  The  pliant  harebell  swinging  in  the  breeze, 
On  some  grey  rock  :  — 
The  single  sheep,  and  the  one  blasted  tree, 
And  the  bleak  music  from  that  old  stone  wall :  —     ^ 
In  the  meadows  and  the  lower  ground, 
Was  all  the  sweetness  of  a  common  dawn  :  — 
And    that   green   corn   all   day    is    rustling    in    thine 
ears !  " 

Clear  and  delicate  at  once  as  he  is  in  the 
outlining  of  visible  imagery,  he  is  more 
finely  scrupulous  still  in  the  noting  of 
sounds  ;  he  conceives  of  noble  sound  as 
even  moulding  the  human  countenance  to 
nobler  types,  and  as  something  actually 
"  profaned  "  by  visible  form  or  colour.  He 
has  a  power  likewise  of  realizing  and  con- 
veying to  the  consciousness  of  his  reader 
abstract  and  elementary  impressions, 
silence,  darkness,  absolute  motionlessness, 
or,  again,  the  whole  complex  sentiment  of 
a  particular  place,  the  abstract  expression 
of  desolation  in  the  long  white  road,  of 
peacefulness  in  a  particular  folding  of  the 
hills. 

That  sense  of  a  life  in  natural  objects, 
which   in   most  poetry  is  but  a  rhetorical 


io8  Essays  from 

artifice,  was,  then,  in  Wordsworth  the  as- 
sertion of  what  was  for  him  almost  literal 
fact.  To  him  every  natural  object  seemed 
to  possess  something  of  moral  or  spiritual 
life,  to  be  really  capable  of  a  companion- 
ship with  man,  full  of  fine  intimacies.  An 
emanation,  a  particular  spirit,  belonged  not 
to  the  moving  leaves  or  water  only,  but  to 
the  distant  peak  arising  suddenly,  by  some 
change  of  perspective,  above  the  nearer 
horizon  of  the  hills,  to  the  passing  space  of 
light  across  the  plain,  to  the  lichened 
Druidic  stone  even,  for  a  certain  weird 
fellowship  in  it  with  the  moods  of  men. 
That  he  awakened  "a  sort  of  thought  in 
sense"  is  Shelley's  just  estimate  of  this 
element  in  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

It  was  through  nature,  ennobled  in  this 
way  by  the  semblance  of  passion  and 
thought,  that  the  poet  approached  the 
spectacle  of  human  life.  For  him,  indeed, 
human  life  is,  in  the  first  instance,  only  an 
additional,  and  as  it  were  incidental 
grace,  upon  this  expressive  landscape. 
When  he  thought  of  men  and  women,  it 


the  "  Guardian^  109 

was  of  men  and  women  as  in  the  presence 
and  under  the  influence  of  those  effective 
natural  objects,  and  linked  to  them  by 
many  associations.  Such  influences  have 
sometimes  seemed  to  belittle  those  who  are 
the  subject  of  them,  at  the  least  to  be 
likely  to  narrow  the  range  of  their  sym- 
pathies. To  Wordsworth,  on  the  contrary, 
they  seemed  directly  to  dignify  human 
nature,  as  tending  to  tranquillize  it.  He 
raises  physical  nature  to  the  level  of  human 
thought,  giving  it  thereby  a  mystic  power 
and  expression  ;  he  subdues  man  to  the 
level  of  nature,  but  gives  him  therewith  a 
certain  breadth  and  vastness  and  solem- 
nity. 

Religious  sentiment,  consecrating  the 
natural  affections  and  rights  of  the  human 
heart,  above  all  that  pitiful  care  and  awe 
for  the  perishing  human  clay  of  which 
relic-worship  is  but  the  corruption,  has 
always  had  much  to  do  with  localities, 
with  the  thoughts  which  attach  themselves 
to  definite  scenes  and  places.  And  what 
is  true  of  it  everywhere  is  truest  in  those 


no  Essays  from 

secluded  valleys,  where  one  generation 
after  another  maintains  the  same  abiding- 
place  ;  and  it  was  on  this  side  that  Words- 
worth apprehended  religion  most  strongly. 
Having  so  much  to  do  with  the  recogni- 
tion of  local  sanctities,  the  habit  of  con- 
necting the  very  trees  and  stones  of  a  par- 
ticular spot  of  earth  with  the  great  events 
of  life,  till  the  low  walls,  the  green  mounds, 
the  half-obliterated  epitaphs,  seemed  full 
of  oracular  voices,  even  the  religion  of 
those  people  of  the  dales  appeared  but  as 
another  link  between  them  and  the  solemn 
imageries  of  the  natural  world.  And, 
again,  this  too  tranquillized  them,  by 
bringing  them  under  the  rule  of  traditional, 
narrowly  localized  observances.  "  Grave 
livers,"  they  seemed  to  him  under  this 
aspect,  of  stately  speech,  and  something 
of  that  natural  dignity  of  manners  which 
underlies  the  highest  courtesy. 

And,  seeing  man  thus  as  a  part  of 
nature,  elevated  and  solemnized  in  propor- 
tion as  his  daily  life  and  occupations 
brought  him  into  companionship  with  per- 


the  '^  Guardian^  1 1 1 

manent  natural  objects,  he  was  able  to  ap- 
preciate passion  in  the  lowly.  He  chooses 
to  depict  people  from  humble  life,  because, 
being  nearer  to  nature  than  others,  they 
are  on  the  whole  more  impassioned,  cer- 
tainly more  direct  in  their  expression  of 
passion,  than  other  men  ;  it  is  for  this 
direct  expression  of  passion  that  he  values 
their  humble  words.  In  much  that  he  said 
in  exaltation  of  rural  life  he  was  but 
pleading  indirectly  for  that  sincerity,  that 
perfect  fidelity  to  one's  own  inward  pre- 
sentations, to  the  precise  features  of  the 
picture  within,  without  which  any  profound 
poetry  is  impossible.  It  was  not  for  their 
tameness,  but  for  their  impassioned  sin- 
cerity, that  he  chose  incidents  and  situa- 
tions from  common  life,  **  related  in  a 
selection  of  language  really  used  by  men." 
He  constantly  endeavours  to  bring  his 
language  nearer  to  the  real  language  of 
men ;  but  it  is  to  the  real  language  of 
men,  not  on  the  dead  level  of  their 
ordinary  intercourse,  but  in  certain  select 
moments    of   vivid    sensation,    when    this 


112  Essays  from 

language  is  winnowed  and  ennobled  by 
sentiment.  There  are  poets  who  have 
chosen  rural  life  for  their  subject  for  the 
sake  of  its  passionless  repose  ;  and  there 
are  times  when  Wordsworth  himself  extols 
the  mere  calm  and  dispassionate  survey 
of  things  as  the  highest  aim  of  poetical 
culture.  But  it  was  not  for  such  pas- 
sionless calm  that  he  preferred  the  scenes 
of  pastoral  life ;  and  the  meditative  poet, 
sheltering  himself  from  the  agitations  of 
the  outward  world,  is  in  reality  only 
clearing  the  scene  for  the  exhibition  of 
great  emotions,  and  what  he  values  most 
is  the  almost  elementary  expression  of 
elementary  feelings. 

In  Wordsworth's  prefatory  advertise- 
ment to  the  first  edition  of  "  The  Prelude," 
published  in  1850,  it  is  stated  that  that 
work  was  intended  to  be  introductory 
to  "The  Recluse":  and  that  "The  Re- 
cluse," if  completed,  would  have  consisted 
of  three  parts.  The  second  part  is  "  The 
Excursion."  The  third  part  was  only 
planned  ;  but   the    first  book  of  the  first 


the  "  Guardian'''  113 

part  was  left  in  manuscript  by  Wordsworth 
— though  in  manuscript,  it  is  said,  in  no  great 
condition  of  forwardness  for  the  printers. 
This  book,  now  for  the  first  time  printed  in 
extenso  (a  very  noble  passage  from  it  found 
place  in  that  prose  advertisement  to  "The 
Excursion  "),  is  the  great  novelty  of  this 
latest  edition  of  Wordsworth's  poetic  works. 
It  was  well  worth  adding  to  the  poet's 
great  bequest  to  English  literature.  The 
true  student  of  his  work,  who  has  formu- 
lated for  himself  what  he  supposes  to  be 
the  leading  characteristics  of  Wordsworth's 
genius,  will  feel,  we  think,  a  lively  interest 
in  putting  them  to  test  by  the  many  and 
various  striking  passages  in  what  is  there 
presented  for  the  first  time. 


VII. 
FERDINAND  FABRE. 

"NoRiNE."  Par  Ferdinand  Fabre. 
June  i2TH,  1889. 


FERDINAND  FABRE. 

An  Idyll  of  the  Cevennes. 

FRENCH  novelist  who,  with 
much  of  Zola's  undoubted  power, 
writes  always  in  the  interest  of 
that  high  type  of  Catholicism  which  still 
prevails  in  the  remote  provinces  of  France, 
of  that  high  type  of  morality  of  which  the 
French  clergy  have  nobly  maintained  the 
ideal,  is  worth  recommending  to  the  more 
serious  class  of  English  readers.  Some- 
thing of  the  gift  of  Francois  Millet,  whose 
peasants  are  veritable  priests,  of  those  older 
religious  painters  who  could  portray  saintly 
heads  so  sweetly  and  their  merely  human 
proteges  so  truly,  seems  indeed  to  have 
descended  to  M.  Ferdinand  Fabre.  In  the 


1 18  Essays  from 

"Abb^  Tigrane,"  in  "Lucifer,"  and  else- 
where, he  has  delineated,  with  wonderful 
power  and  patience,  a  strictly  ecclesiastical 
portraiture — shrewd,  passionate,  somewhat 
melancholy  heads,  which,  though  they  are 
often  of  peasant  origin,  are  never  by  any 
chance  undignified.  The  passions  he  treats 
of  in  priests  are,  indeed,  strictly  clerical, 
most  often  their  ambitions — not  the  errant 
humours  of  the  mere  man  in  the  priest, 
but  movements  of  spirit  properly  incidental 
to  the  clerical  type  itself.  Turning  to  the 
secular  brothers  and  sisters  of  these  peasant 
ecclesiastics,  at  first  sight  so  strongly  con- 
trasted with  them,  M.  Fabre  shows  a  great 
acquaintance  with  the  sources,  the  effects, 
of  average  human  feeling;  but  still  in  con- 
tact— in  contact,  as  its  conscience,  its  better 
mind,  its  ideal — with  the  institutions  of 
religion.  What  constitutes  his  distinguish- 
ing note  as  a  writer  is  the  recognition  of 
the  religious,  the  Catholic,  ideal,  intervening 
masterfully  throughout  the  picture  he  pre- 
sents of  life,  as  the  only  mode  of  poetry 
realizable  by  the  poor  ;  and  although,  of 


the  '■'•  Guardian^  119 

course,  it  does  a  great  deal  more  beside, 
certainly  doing  the  high  work  of  poetry 
effectively.  For  his  background  he  has 
chosen,  has  made  his  own  and  conveys 
very  vividly  to  his  readers,  a  district  of 
France,  gloomy,  in  spite  of  its  almonds,  its 
oil  and  wine,  but  certainly  grandiose.  The 
large  towns,  the  sparse  hamlets,  the  wide 
landscape  of  the  Cevennes,  are  for  his 
books  what  the  Rhineland  is  to  those 
delightful  authors,  Messrs.  Erckmann-Cha- 
trian.  In  "  Les  Courbezon,"  the  French 
"  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  as  Sainte-Beuve  de- 
clared, with  this  imposing  background,  the 
Church  and  the  world,  as  they  shape  them- 
selves in  the  Cevennes,  the  priest  and  the 
peasant,  occupy  about  an  equal  share  of 
interest.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  charming 
little  book  we  wish  now  to  introduce,  un- 
clerical  human  nature  occupies  the  fore- 
ground almost  exclusively  ;  though  priestly 
faces  will  still  be  found  gazing  upon  us 
from  time  to  time. 

In  form,  the  book  is  a  bundle  of  letters 
from  a  Parisian  litterateur  to  the  friend  of 


1 20  Essays  from 

his  boyhood,  now  the  cure  of  one  of  those 
mountain  villages.  He  is  refreshing  him- 
self, in  the  midst  of  dusty,  sophisticated 
Paris,  with  memories  of  their  old,  delightful 
existence  —  vagabonde,  libre,  agreste,  pas- 
torale—  in  their  upland  valley.  He  can 
appeal  safely  to  the  aged  cures  friendly 
justice,  even  in  exposing  delicacies  of  sen- 
timent which  most  men  conceal  :  — 

"  As  for  you,  frank,  certain  of  your  own 
mind,  joyous  of  heart,  methinks  scarce 
understanding  those  whose  religion  makes 
their  souls  tremble  instead  of  fortifying 
them — you,  I  am  sure,  take  things  by 
the  large  and  kindly  side  of  human 
life." 

The  story  our  Parisian  has  to  tell  is 
simple  enough,  and  we  have  no  intention 
of  betraying  it,  but  only  to  note  some  of 
the  faces,  the  scenes,  that  peep  out  in  the 
course  of  it. 

The  gloom  of  the  Cevennes  is  the  im- 
pression M.  Fabre  most  commonly  conveys. 
In  this  book  it  is  rather  the  cheerful  aspect 
of  summer,  those    upland    valleys    of  the 


the  ^' Guardiaiiy  121 

Cevennes  presenting  then  a  symphony  in 
red,  so  to  call  it — as  in  a  land  of  cherries 
and  goldfinches  ;  and  he  has  a  genial  power 
certainly  of  making  you  really  feel  the  sun 
on  the  backs  of  the  two  boys  out  early  for 
a  long  ramble,  of  old  peasants  resting  them- 
selves a  little,  with  spare  enjoyment,  ere 
the  end  :  — 

"  As  we  turned  a  sharp  elbow  of  the 
stream  the  aspect  of  the  country  changed. 
It  seemed  to  me  entirely  red.  Cherries  in 
enormous  bunches  were  hanging  every- 
where over  our  heads.  .  .  . 

"  It  was  a  hut,  rather  low,  rather  dark. 
A  log  of  chestnut  was  smouldering  in  a 
heap  of  ashes.  Every  object  was  in  its 
place :  the  table,  the  chairs,  the  plates 
ranged  on  the  dresser.  A  fairy,  in  truth, 
reigned  there,and,by  the  touch  of  her  wand, 
brought  cleanliness  and  order  on  every  side. 

"  '  Is  it  you,  Norine  ? '  asked  a  voice  from 
a  dark  corner,three  steps  from  the  fireplace. 

" '  Yes,  nion  grand,  it  is  I  !  The  heat 
was  growing  greater  every  moment,  and  I 
have  taken  in  the  2:oats.' 


122  Essays  from 

"  Norine  unclosed  the  window.  A  broad 
light  spread  over  the  floor  of  beaten  earth, 
like  a  white  cloth.  The  cottage  was  illu- 
minated. I  saw  an  old  man  seated  on  a 
wooden  stool  in  a  recess,  where  an  ample 
serge  curtain  concealed  a  bed.  He  held 
himself  slightly  bent,  the  two  hands  held 
forth,  one  over  the  other,  on  the  knob  of  a 
knotty  staff,  highly  polished.  In  spite 
of  eighty  years,  Norine's  grandfather — /e 
grand,  as  they  say  up  there  —  had  not  lost 
a  hair  :  beautiful  white  locks  fell  over  his 
shoulders — crisp,thick,outspread.  I  thought 
of  those  fine  wigs  of  tow  or  hemp  with 
which  the  distaff  of  our  Prudence  was 
always  entangled.  He  was  close  shaved, 
after  the  manner  of  our  peasants  ;  and  the 
entire  mask  was  to  be  seen  disengaged,  all 
its  admirable  lines  free,  commanded  by  a 
full-sized  nose,  below  which  the  good,  thick 
lips  were  smiling,  full  of  kindness.  The 
eyes,  however,  though  still  clear  and  soft 
in  expression,  had  a  certain  lixity  which 
startled  me.  He  raised  himself.  His 
stature  seemed  to  me  beyond  proportion. 


the  "  Guardian^  123 

He  was  really  beautiful,  with  the  content- 
ment of  his  face,  straight  as  the  trunk  of 
a  chestnut,  his  old  velvet  coat  thrown  back, 
his  shirt  of  coarse  cloth  open  at  the  breast, 
so  that  one  saw  the  play  of  the  ribs. 

"  '  Monsieur  le  neveu!  '  he  cried  ;  '  where 
are  you  ?     Come  to  me  !  I  am  blind.' 

"  I  approached.  He  felt  me,  with  ten 
fingers,  laying  aside  his  staff. 

" '  And  you  would  not  take  offence 
if  a  poor  peasant  like  me  embraced 
you  .'' ' 

"  '  Quick,  Jalaguier  ! '  I  cried,  throwing 
myself  into  his  arms.  'Quick!'  He  pressed 
me  till  the  joints  started.  Leaned  upon 
his  broad  chest,  I  heard  the  beating  of  his 
heart.  It  beat  under  my  ears  with  a  burden 
like  our  bell  at  Camplong.  What  powerful 
vitality  in  l^ior'mQ's  £-rand /  'It  does  an 
old  man  good  : — a  good  hug ! '  he  said, 
letting  me  go." 

The  boyish  visitors  are  quite  ready  to 
sit  down  there  to  dinner  :  — 

"  With  the  peasant  of  the  Cevennes  (M. 
Fabre  tells   us)  the   meal  is    what  nature 


124  Essays  from 

meant  it  to  be — a  few  moments  for  self- 
recovery  after  fatigue,  a  short  space  of 
silence  of  a  quite  elevated  character,  almost 
sacred.  The  poor  human  creature  has 
given  the  sweat  of  his  brow  to  extort  from 
an  ungrateful  soil  his  daily  bread ;  and 
now  he  eats  that  well-savoured  bread  in 
silent  self-respect. 

"  It  is  a  weary  thing  to  be  thinking 
always  of  one's  work  (says  \.\iQ.  grand  to  the 
somewhat  sparing  Norine).  We  must  also 
think  of  our  sustenance.  You  are  too 
enduring,  my  child !  it  is  a  mistake  to 
demand  so  much  of  your  arms.  In  truth, 
le  bon  Dieji  has  cut  you  out  after  the  pat- 
tern of  your  dead  father.  Every  morning, 
in  my  prayers,  I  put  in  my  complaint 
thereanent.  My  poor  boy  died  from  going 
too  fast.  He  could  never  sit  still  when 
it  was  a  question  of  gathering  a  few  sous 
from  the  fields  ;  and  those  fields  took  and 
consumed  him." 

The  boy  fancies  that  the  blind  eyes  are 
turned  towards  a  particular  spot  in  the 
landscape,  as  if  they  saw  :  — 


the  "  Guardian^  125 

"  I  often  turn  my  eyes  in  that  direction 
(the  old  man  explains)  from  habit.  One 
might  suppose  that  a  peasant  had  the  scent 
of  the  earth  on  which  he  has  laboured.  I 
have  given  so  much  of  the  sweat  of  my 
brow — there — towards  Rocaillet !  Angd- 
lique,  my  dead  wife,  was  of  Rocaillet ;  and 
when  she  married  me,  brought  a  few  morsels 
of  land  in  her  apron.  What  a  state  they're 
in  now  ! — thosepoor  morsels  of  land  we  used 
to  weed  and  rake  and  hoe,  my  boy  and  I ! 
What  superb  crops  of  vetches  we  mowed 
then,  for  feeding,  in  due  time,  our  lambs, 
our  calves  !  All  is  gone  to  ruin  since  my 
blindness,  and  especially  since  Ang^lique 
left  me  for  the  churchyard,  never  to  come 
back.'  He  paused  to  my  great  relief.  For 
every  one  of  those  phrases  he  modulated 
under  the  fig-trees  more  sadly  than  the 
Lamentations  of  Jeremiah  on  Jeudi  Saint 
overset  me  —  was  like  death." 

That  is  good  drawing,  in  its  simple  and 
quiet  way !  The  actual  scene,  however,  is 
cheerful  enough  on  this  earlysummer  day — 
a  symphony,  as  we  said,  in  cherries  and 


126  Essays  from 

goldfinches,  in  which  the  higher  valleys  of 
the  Cevennes  abound.  In  fact,  the  boys 
witness  XhQaccordailles,  the  engagement,  of 
Norine  and  Justin  Lebasset.  The  latter  is 
calling  the  birds  to  sing  good  luck  to  the 
event : — 

**  He  had  a  long  steady  look  towards  the 
fruit-trees,  and  then  whistled,  on  a  note  at 
once  extremely  clear  and  extremely  soft. 
He  paused,  watched  awhile,  recommenced. 
The  note  became  more  rapid,  more  sono- 
rous. What  an  astounding  man  he  was, 
this  Justin  Lebasset!  Upright, his  red  beard 
forward,  his  forehead  thrown  back,  his  eyes 
on  the  thick  foliage  of  the  cherry-trees,  his 
hands  on  his  haunches,  in  an  attitude  of 
repose,  easy,  superb,  he  was  like  some 
youthful  pagan  god,  gilded  with  red  gold, 
on  his  way  across  the  country — like  Pan,  if 
he  chose  to  amuse  himself  by  charming 
birds.  You  should  have  seen  the  enthu- 
siastic glances  with  which  Norine  watched 
him.  Upright — she  too,  slim, at  full  height, 
inclining  from  time  to  time  towards  Justin 
with  a  movement  of  irresistible  fascination. 


the  "  Guardian'  127 

she  followed  the  notes  of  her  mate  ;  and 
sometimes,  her  lips  half  opening,  added 
thereto  a  sigh — something  of  a  sigh,  an 
aspiration,  a  prayer,  towards  the  goldfinch, 
withdrawn  into  the  shadows. 

"  The  leaves  were  shaken  in  the  clear, 
burning  green  ;  and,  on  a  sudden,  a  multi- 
tude of  goldfinches,  the  heads  red  in  the 
wind,  the  wings  half  spread,  were  fluttering 
frombranch  to  branch.  I  could  have  fancied, 
amid  the  quivering  of  the  great  bunches  of 
fruit,  that  they  were  cherries  on  the  wing. 
Justin  suffered  his  pipe  to  die  away  :  the 
birds  were  come  at  his  invitation,  and  per- 
formed their  prelude." 

It  is  forty  years  afterwards  that  the 
narrator,  now  a  man  of  letters  in  Paris, 
writes  to  his  old  friend,  with  tidings  of 
Justin  and  Norine:  — 

"  In  1842  (he  observes)  you  were  close  on 
fifteen;  I  scarcely  twelve.  In  my  eyes  your 
age  made  you  my  superior.  And  then,  you 
were  so  strong,  so  tender,  so  amiteux,  to  use 
a  word  from  up  there  —  a  charming  word. 
And  so  God,  Who  had  His  designs  for  you, 


128  Essays  from 

whereas  I,  in  spite  of  my  pious  childhood, 
wandered  on  my  way  as  chance  bade  me, 
led  you  by  the  hand,  attached,  ended  by 
keeping  you  for  Himself.  He  did  well 
truly  when  He  chose  you  and  rejected  me!" 

His  finding  the  pair  in  the  wilds  of 
Paris  is  an  adventure,  in  which,  in  fact,  a 
goldfinch  again  takes  an  important  part  — 
a  goldfinch  who  is  found  to  understand  the 
Cevenol  dialect  :  — 

"  The  goldfinch  (escaped  from  its  cage 
somewhere,  into  the  dreary  court  of  the 
Institute)  has  seen  me  :  is  looking  at  me. 
If  he  chose  to  make  his  way  into  my  apart- 
ment, he  would  be  very  welcome.  I  feel  a 
strong  impulse  to  try  him  with  that  unique 
patois  word,  which,  whistled  after  a  peculiar 
manner,  when  I  was  a  boy  never  failed  to 
succeed  in  the  mountains  of  Orb — Beni  ! 
Beni  !  Viens  !  Viens  !  I  dare  not  !  He 
might  take  fright  and  fly  away  altogether." 

In  effect,  the  Cevenol  bird,  true  to  call, 
introduces  Norine,hisrightful  owner,  whose 
husband  Justin  is  slowly  dying.  Towards 
the  end  of  a   hard  life,  faithful   to   their 


the  '' Guardianr  129 

mountain  ideal,  they  have  not  lost  their 
dignity,  though  in  a  comparatively  sordid 
medium  : 

"  As  for  me,  my  dear  Arribas,!  remained 
in  deep  agitation,  an  attentive  spectator  of 
the  scene;  and  while  Justin  and  Norine,  set 
both  alike  in  the  winepress  of  sorrow,  le 
pressoir  de  la  douleiir,  as  your  good  books 
express  it,  murmured  to  each  other  their 
broken  consoling  words,  I  saw  them  again, 
in  thought,  young,  handsome,  in  the  full 
flower  of  life,  under  the  cherry-trees,  the 
swarming  goldfinches,  of  blind  Barthelemy 
Jalaquier.  Ah  me  !  It  was  thus  that,  five- 
and-forty  years  after,  in  this  dark  street  of 
Paris, that  festive  day  was  finishing, blessed, 
in  the  plenitude  of  nature,  by  that  august 
old  man,  celebrated  by  the  alternate  song 
of  all  the  birds  of  Rocaillet." 

Justin's  one  remaining  hope  is  to  go  home 
to  those  native  mountains,  if  it  may  be, 
with  the  dead  body  of  his  boy,  dead  "  the 
very  morning  on  which  he  should  have 
received  the  tonsure  from  the  hands  of 
Mgr.  I'Archeveque,"  and  buried  now  tem- 
K 


1 30  Essays  from 

porarily  at  the  cemetery  of  Montpar- 
nasse  :  — 

"  '  Theodore  calls  me.  I  saw  him  dis- 
tinctly to-night.  He  gave  me  a  sign. 
After  all  said,  life  is  heavy,  sans  le  fillot, 
and  but  for  you  it  were  well  to  be  released 
from  it.'     .     .     . 

"  '  I  have  seen  Justin  Lebasset  die,  dear 
Arribas,  and  was  touched,  edified,  to  the 
bottomof  mysoul.  Godgrant,whenmy  hour 
comes,  I  may  find  that  calm,  that  force,  in 
the  last  struggle  with  life.  Not  a  complaint! 
not  a  sigh  !  Once  only  he  gave  Norine  a 
sorrowful,  heartrending  look ;  then,  from 
lips  already  cold,  breathed  that  one  word, 
'  Theodore  ! '  Marcus  Aurelius  used  to  say  : 
'  A  man  should  leave  the  world  as  a  ripe 
olive  falls  from  the  tree  that  bore  it,  and 
with  a  kiss  for  the  earth  that  nourished  it' 
Well !  the  peasant  of  Rocaillet  had  the 
beautiful,  noble,  simple  death  of  the  fruit  of 
the  earth,  going  to  the  common  receptacle 
of  all  mortal  beings,  with  no  sense  that  he 
was  torn  away.  Pardon,  I  pray,  my  quota- 
tion from  Marcus  Aurelius,  who  persecuted 


the  '''  Guardian r  131 

the  Christians.  I  give  it  with  the  same 
respect  with  which  you  would  quote  some 
holy  writer.  Ah  !  my  dear  Arribas  !  not  all 
the  saints  have  received  canonization." 

It  is  to  the  priestly  character,  in  truth, 
that  M.  Fabre  always  comes  back  for 
tranquillizing  effect  ;  and  if  his  peasants 
have  something  akin  to  Wordsworth's,  his 
priests  may  remind  one  of  those  solemn 
ecclesiastical  heads  familiar  in  the  paintings 
and  etchings  of  M.  Alphonse  Legros.  The 
reader  travelling  in  Italy,  or  Belgium 
perhaps,  has  doubtless  visited  one  or  more 
of  those  spacious  sacristies,  introduced  to 
which  for  the  inspection  of  some  more 
than  usually  recJierche  work  of  art,  one  is 
presently  dominated  by  their  reverend 
quiet  :  simple  people  coming  and  going 
there,devout,or  at  least  on  devout  business, 
withhalf-pitched  voices,notwithout  touches 
of  kindly  humour,  in  what  seems  to  express 
like  a  picture  the  most  genial  side,  midway 
between  the  altar  and  the  home,  of  the 
ecclesiastical  life.  Just  such  interiors  we 
seem  to  visit  under  the  magic  of  M.  Fabre's 


132  Essays  from  the  '''' Guardianr 

well-trained  pen.  He  has  a  real  power  of 
taking  one  from  Paris,  or  from  London,  to 
places  and  people  certainly  very  different 
from  either,  to  the  satisfaction  of  those  who 
seek  in  fiction  an  escape. 


VIII. 

THE  "CONTES"  OF 

M.    AUGUSTIN    FILON. 

July  i6th,   1890. 

"CoNTES  Du  Centenaire."     Par  Augustin  Filon. 
Paris:   Hachette  et  Cie. 


THE  "CONTES"  OF 
M.    AUGUSTIN    FILON. 

Tales  of  a  Hundred  Years  Since. 

T  was  a  happy  thought  of  M. 
Filon  to  put  into  the  mouth  of  an 
imaginary  centenarian  a  series  of 
delightfully  picturesque  studies  which  aim 
at  the  minute  presentment  of  life  in  France 
under  the  old  regime,  and  end  for  the  most 
part  with  the  Revolution.  A  genial  cen- 
tenarian, whose  years  have  told  happily 
on  him,  he  appreciates  not  only  those 
humanities  of  feeling  and  habit  which  were 
peculiar  to  the  last  century  and  passed  away 
with  it,  but  also  that  permanent  humanity 
which  has  but  undergone  a  change  of 
surface  in  the  new  world  of  our  own,  wholly 


136  Essays  from 

different  though  it  may  look.  With  a 
sympathetic  sense  of  life  as  it  is  always, 
M.  Filon  has  transplanted  the  creations  of 
his  fancy  into  an  age  certainly  at  a  greater 
distance  from  ourselves  than  can  be  esti- 
mated by  mere  lapse  of  time,  and  where  a 
fully  detailed  antiquarian  knowledge,  used 
with  admirable  tact  and  economy,  is  indeed 
serviceable  in  giving  reality  of  effect  to 
scene  and  character.  In  truth,  M.  Filon's 
very  lively  antiquarianism  carries  with  it  a 
genuine  air  of  personal  memory.  With  him, 
as  happens  so  rarely,  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  historic  detail  is  the  secret  of  life,  of  the 
impression  of  life  ;  puts  his  own  imagina- 
tion on  the  wing  ;  secures  the  imaginative 
co-operation  of  the  reader.  A  stately  age 
—  to  us,  perhaps,  in  the  company  of  the 
historic  muse,  seeming  even  more  stately 
than  it  actually  was  —  it  is  pleasant  to  find 
it,  as  we  do  now  and  again  on  these  pages, 
mg'^^.(iQ.{\Ade sJiabille.  Withperfectlightness 
of  touch,  M.  Filon  seems  to  have  acomplete 
command  of  all  the  physiognomic  details  of 
old  France,  of  old  Paris  and  its  people  — 


the  "  Guardianr  137 

how  they  made  a  holiday  ;  how  they  got  at 
the  news  ;  the  fashions.  Did  the  English 
reader  ever  hear  before  of  the  beautifully 
dressed  doll  which  came  once  a  month 
from  Paris  to  Soho  to  teach  an  expectant 
world  of  fashion  how  to  dress  itself?  Old 
Paris  !  For  young  lovers  at  their  windows, 
for  every  one  fortunate  enough  to  have 
seen  it : — "  Qu'il  est  joli  ce  paysage  du 
Paris  nocturne  d'il  y  a  cent  ans ! "  We 
think  we  shall  best  do  justice  to  an  un- 
usually pretty  book  by  taking  one  of  M. 
Filon's  stories  (not  because  we  are  quite 
sure  it  is  the  cleverest  of  them)  with  a  view 
to  the  more  definite  illustration  of  his 
method,  therein. 

Christopher  Marteau  was  a  warden  of 
the  corporation  of  LutJiiers.  He  dealt  in 
musical  instruments,  as  his  father  and 
grandfather  had  done  before  him,  at  the 
sign  of  Saint  Cecilia.  With  his  wife,  his 
only  child  Phlipote,  and  Claude  his 
apprentice,  who  was  to  marry  Phlipote, 
he  occupied  a  good  house  of  his  own.  Of 
course  the  disposition  of  the  young  people, 


1 38  Essays  fro7n 

bred  together  from  their  childhood,  does 
not  at  first  entirely  concur  with  the 
parental  arrangements.  But  the  story  tells, 
reassuringly,  how — to  some  extent  how 
sadly  —  they  came  heartily  to  do  so.  M. 
Marteau  was  no  ordinary  shopkeeper. 
The  various  distinguished  people  who  had 
fingered  his  clavecins,  and  turned  over  the 
folios  of  music,  for  half  a  century  past,  had 
left  their  memories  behind  them  ;  M.  de 
Voltaire,  for  instance,  who  had  caressed 
the  head  of  Phlipote  with  an  aged,  skeleton 
hand,  leaving,  apparently,  no  very  agreeable 
impression  on  the  child,  though  her  father 
delighted  to  recall  the  incident,  being  him- 
self a  demi-pJiilosophe.  He  went  to  church, 
that  is  to  say,  only  twice  a  year,  on  the 
Feast  of  St. Cecilia  and  on  the  Sunday  when 
the  Z«////Vr^  offered  \.\\q  pain  benit.  It  was 
his  opinion  that  everything  in  the  State 
needed  reform  except  the  Corporations. 
The  relations  of  the  husband  to  his  affec- 
tionate, satiric,  pleasure-seeking  wife,  who 
knew  so  well  all  the  eighteen  theatres 
which   then  existed   in    Paris,  are  treated 


the  '"  Guardian r  139 

with  much  quiet  humour.  On  Sundays 
the  four  set  forth  together  for  a  country 
holiday.  At  such  times  Phlipote  would 
walk  half-a-dozen  paces  in  advance  of  her 
father  and  mother,  side  by  side  with  her 
intended.  But  they  never  talked  to  each 
other :  the  hands,  the  eyes,  never  met.  Of 
what  was  Phlipote  dreaming }  and  what 
was  in  the  thoughts  of  Claude .' 

It  happened  one  day  that,  like  sister  and 
brother,  the  lovers  exchanged  confidences. 
"It  is  not  always,"  observes  Phlipote,  whom 
every  one  excepting  Claude  on  those  occa- 
sions sought  with  admiring  eyes  — 

"  '  It  is  not  always  one  loves  those  one  is 
told  to  love.' 

"  '  What,  haveyou,  too,  a  secret,  my  little 
Phlipote  ? ' 

"  '  I  ^00,  Claude  !  Then  what  may  be 
yours  .'' ' 

"  '  Listen,  Phlipote  ! '  he  answered.  '  We 
don't  wish  to  be  husband  and  wife,  but  we 
can  be  friends  —  good  and  faithful  friends, 
helping  each  other  to  change  the  decision 
of  our  parents.' 


140  Essays  from 

"  '  Were  I  but  sure  you  would  not  betray 
me ' 

"'Would  you  like  me  to  confess  first? 

The  woman  I  love Ah  !  but  you  will 

laugh  at  my  folly  !  ' 

"'No,  Claude!  I  shall  not  laugh.  I 
know  too  well  what  one  suffers.' 

"  '  Especially  when  love  is  hopeless.' 

"  '  Hopeless  ? ' 

" '  Alas !  I  have  never  spoken  to  her. 
Perhaps  never  shall ! ' 

"  '  Well !  as  for  me,  I  don't  even  know  the 
name  of  him  to  whom  my  heart  is  given  ! ' 

"*  Ah!  poor  Phlipote!' 

" '  Poor  Claude  ! ' 

"They  had  approached  each  other.  The 
young  man  took  the  tiny  hand  of  his  friend, 
pressing  it  in  his  own. 

"'The  woman  I  adore  is  Mademoiselle 
Guimard  !  ' 

" '  What !  Guimard  of  the  Opera  ?  —  the 
fiancee  of  Despreaux  .?  "  ' 

Claude  still  held  the  hands  of  Phlipote, 
wdio  was  trembling  now,  and  almost  on  fire 
at   the    story   of  this  ambitious  love.     In 


the  ''  Guardian'^  141 

return  she  reveals  her  own.  It  was  Good 
Friday.  She  had  come  with  her  mother  to 
the  Sainte  Chapelle  to  hear  Mademoiselle 
Coupain  play  the  organ  and  witness  the 
extraordinary  spectacle  of  the  convulsion- 
naires,  brought  thither  to  be  touched  by 
the  relic  of  the  True  Cross.  In  the  press 
of  the  crowd  at  this  exciting  scene  Phlipote 
faints,  or  nearly  faints,  when  a  young  man 
comes  kindly  to  their  aid.  "  She  is  so 
young  ! "  he  explains  to  the  mother,  "  she 
seems  so  delicate  !  "  "  He  looked  at  me," 
she  tells  Claude — "he  looked  at  me.through 
his  half-closed  eyelids ;  and  his  words  were 
like  a  caress  "  :  — 

"'And  have  you  seen  him  no  more?' 
asks  Claude,  full  of  sympathy. 

"  '  Yes  !  once  again.  He  pretended  to  be 
looking  at  the  window  of  the  Little  Dun- 
kirk, over  the  way,  but  with  cautious 
glances  towards  our  house.  Only,  as  he 
did  not  know  what  storey  we  live  on,  he 
failed  to  discover  me  behind  my  curtain, 
where  I  was  but  half  visible.' 

"'You  should  have  shown  yourself.' 


142  Essays  from 

"  '  Oh, Claude  ! '  she  cried, with  a  delicious 
gesture  of  timidity,  of  shame. 

"So  they  prattled  for  a  long  time;  he 
talking  of  the  great  Guimard,  she  of  her 
unknown  lover,  scarce  listening  to,  but 
completely  understanding  each  other. 

"  '  Holloa  ! '  cries  the  loud  voice  of  Chris- 
topher Marteau.  '  What  are  you  doing  out 
there } ' 

"The  young  people  arose.  Phlipote 
linked  her  arm  gaily  in  that  of  Claude. 
'  How  contented  I  feel ! '  she  says  ;  *  how 
good  it  is  to  have  a  friend  —  to  have  you 
whom  I  used  to  detest,  because  I  thought 
you  were  in  love  with  me.  Now,  when  I 
know  you  can't  bear  me,  I  shall  be  nicely 
in  love  with  you.'  The  soft  warmth  of  her 
arm  seemed  to  pass  through  Claude,  and 
gave  him  strange  sensations.  He  resumed 
naively,  '  Yes !  and  how  odd  it  is  after  all 
that  I  am  not  in  love  with  you.  You  are 
so  pretty  ! '  Phlipote  raised  her  finger 
coquettishly,  '  No  compliments,  monsieur. 
Since  we  are  not  to  marry  each  other,  it  is 
forbidden  to  pay  court  to  me  ! '  " 


tJie  "  GuardiaiiT  143 

From  that  day  a  close  intimacy  estab- 
lished itself  between  the  formerly  affianced 
pair,  now  become  accomplices  in  defeating 
the  good  intentions  of  their  elders.  In 
long  conversations,  they  talked  in  turn,  or 
both  together,  of  their  respectiv^e  loves. 
Phlipote  allows  Claude  entrance  to  her 
chamber,  full  of  admiration  for  its  graceful 
arrangements,  its  virgin  cleanliness.  He 
inspects  slowly  all  the  familiar  objects 
daily  touched  by  her,  her  books,  her  girlish 
ornaments.  One  day  she  cried  with  an  air 
of  mischief,  "  If  sJie  were  here  in  my  place, 
what  would  you  do  ?  "  and  no  sooner  were 
the  words  uttered  than  his  arms  were  round 
her  neck.  " 'Tis  but  to  teach  you  what  I 
would  do  were  she  here."  They  were  a 
little  troubled  by  this  adventure. 

And  the  next  day  was  a  memorable  one. 
By  the  kind  contrivance  of  Phlipote  her- 
self, Claude  gains  the  much-desired  access 
to  the  object  of  his  affections,  but  to  his 
immense  disillusion.  If  he  could  but  speak 
to  her,  he  fancies  he  should  find  the  courage, 
the  skill,  to  bend  her.  Breathless,  Phlipote 


144  Essays  from, 

comes  in  secret  with  the  good  news.  The 
great  actress  desires  some  one  to  tune  her 
clavecin :  — 

"  *  Papa  would  have  gone  ;  but  I  begged 
him  so  earnestly  to  take  me  to  the  Theatre 
Fran9ais  that  he  could  not  refuse ;  and  it 
is  yourself  will  go  this  evening  to  tune  the 
clavecin  of  your  beloved.* 

" '  Phlipote,  you've  a  better  heart  than  I ! 
This  morning  I  saw  a  gentleman,  who  re- 
sembled point  by  point  your  description  of 
the  unknown  at  the  Sainte  CJiapelle,  prowl- 
ing about  our  shop.' 

•' '  And  you  didn't  tell  me  ! ' 

"  Claude  hung  his  head. 

"  *  But  why  not  ? '  the  young  girl  asks 
imperiously.     '  Why  not .'' ' 

" '  In  truth  I  could  hardly  say,  hardly 
understand,  myself.  Do  you  forgive  me, 
Phlipote .? ' 

"  *  I  suppose  I  must.  So  make  yourself  as 
smart  as  you  can,  to  please  your  goddess.'  " 

Next  day  she  hears  the  story  of  Claude's 
grievous  disappointment  on  seeing  the 
great   actress   at   home  —  plain,    five-and- 


the  "  Guardian^  145 

forty,    ill-tempered.     He   had    tuned    the 
clavecin  and  taken  flight. 

And  now  for  Phlipote's  idol  !  It  was 
agreed  that  Whitsunday  should  be  spent 
at  Versailles.  On  that  day  the  royal  apart- 
ments were  open  to  the  public,  and  at  the 
hour  of  High  Mass  the  crowd  flowed  back 
towards  the  vestibule  of  the  chapel  to  wit- 
ness what  was  called  the  procession  of  the 
Cordons  Bletis.  The  "  Blue  Ribbons  "  were 
the  knights  of  the  Order  Dii^  Saint-Esprit 
in  their  robes  of  ceremony,  who  came  to 
range  themselves  in  the  choir  according  to 
the  date  of  their  creation.  The  press  was 
so  great  that  the  parents  were  separated 
from  the  young  people.  Claude,  however, 
at  the  side  of  Phlipote,  realized  the  ideal  of 
a  faithful  and  jealous  guardian.  The  Jialle- 
bardes  of  the  Snisses  rang  on  the  marble 
pavement  of  the  gallery.  Royalty,  now 
unconsciously  presenting  its  ceremonies  for 
the  last  time,  advanced  through  a  cloud  of 
splendour  ;  but  before  the  Queen  appeared 
it  was  necessary  that  all  the  knights  of  the 
order  down  to  the  youngest  should  pass  by, 
L 


146  Essays  from 

slow,  solemn,  majestic.  They  wore,  besides 
their  ribbons  of  blue  moire,  the  silver  dove 
on  the  shoulder,  and  the  long  mantle  of 
sombre  blue  velvet  lined  with  yellow  satin. 
Phlipote  watched  mechanically  the  double 
file  of  haughty  figures  passing  before  them  : 
then,  on  a  sudden,  with  a  feeble  cry,  falls 
fainting  into  the  arms  of  Claude. 

Recovered  after  a  while,  under  shelter  of 
the  great  staircase,  she  wept  as  those  weep 
whose  heart  is  broken  by  a  great  blow. 
Claude,  without  a  word,  sustained,  soothed 
her.  A  sentiment  of  gratitude  mingled 
itself  with  her  distress.  "  How  good  he 
is  !  "  she  thought. 

"  It  was  a  pity,"  says  her  mother  a  little 
later  —  "a  pity  you  did  not  see  the  Cordojis 
Bleus.  P'ancy !  You  will  laugh  at  me ! 
But  in  one  of  the  handsomest  of  the  Che- 
valiers I  felt  sure  I  recognized  the  stranger 
who  helped  us  at  the  Salute  Chapelle,  and 
was  so  gallant  with  you." 

Phlipote  did  not  laugh.  "  You  are  de- 
ceived, mother  !  "  she  said  in  a  faint  voice. 
"  Pardi ! "  cries  the  father.     "  'Tis  what  I 


the  "  Guardianr  147 

always  say.  Your  stranger  was  some 
young  fellow  from  a  shop." 

Two  months  later  the  young  people 
receive  the  nuptial  benediction,  and  con- 
tinue the  musical  business  when  the  elders 
retire  to  the  country.  At  first  a  passionate 
lover,  Claude  was  afterwards  a  good  and 
devoted  husband.  Phlipote  never  again 
opened  her  lips  regarding  the  vague  love 
which  for  a  moment  had  flowered  in  her 
heart  :  only  sometimes,  a  cloud  of  reverie 
veiled  her  eyes,  which  seemed  to  seek 
sadly,  beyond  the  circle  of  her  slow,  calm 
life,  a  brilliant  but  chimeric  image  visible 
for  her  alone. 

And  once  again  she  saw  him.  It  was  in 
the  terrible  year  1794.  She  knew  the  hour 
at  which  the  tumbril  with  those  condemned 
to  die  passed  the  windows  ;  and  at  the  first 
signal  would  close  them  and  draw  the  cur- 
tain. But  on  this  day  some  invincible  fas- 
cination nailed  her  to  her  place.  There 
were  ten  faces ;  but  she  had  eyes  for  one 
alone.  She  had  not  forgotten,  could  not 
mistake,  him  —  that  pale  head,  so  proud 


148  Essays  from  the ' '  Guardian. ' ' 

and  fine,  but  now  thin  with  suffering  ;  the 
beautiful  mobile  eyes,  now  encircled  with 
the  signs  of  sorrow  and  watching.  The 
convict's  shirt,  open  in  large,  broad  folds, 
left  bare  the  neck,  delicate  as  a  woman's, 
and  made  for  that  youthful  face  an  aureole, 
of  innocence,  of  martyrdom.  His  looks 
met  hers.  Did  he  recognize  her  ?  She 
could  not  have  said.  She  remained  there, 
paralyzed  with  emotion,  till  the  moment 
when  the  vision  disappeared. 

Then  she  flung  herself  into  her  chamber, 
fell  on  her  knees,  lost  herself  in  prayer. 
There  was  a  distant  roll  of  drums.  The 
man  to  whom  she  had  given  her  maiden 
soul  was  gone. 

"  Cursed  be  their  anger.for  it  was  cruel !  " 
says  the  reader.  But  Monsieur  Filon's 
stories  sometimes  end  as  merrily  as  they 
begin  ;  and  always  he  is  all  delicacy  —  a 
delicacy  which  keeps  his  large  yet  minute 
antiquarian  knowledge  of  that  vanished 
time  ever  in  service  to  a  direct  interest  in 
humanity  as  it  is  permanently,  alike  before 
and  after  '93.  His  book  is  certainly  one 
well  worth  possessing. 


IX. 
MR.  GOSSE'S  POEMS. 

October  29TH,   1890. 


MR.  GOSSE'S  POEMS. 


On  Viol  and  Flute." 
Gosse. 


By  Edmund 


ERHAPS  no  age  of  literature, 
certainly  no  age  of  literature  in 
England,  has  been  so  rich  as  ours 
in  excellent  secondary  poetry ;  and  it  is 
with  our  poetry  (in  a  measure)  as  with  our 
architecture,  constrained  by  the  nature  of 
the  case  to  be  imitative.  Our  generation, 
quite  reasonably,  is  not  very  proud  of  its 
architectural  creations  ;  confesses  that  it 
kjiows  too  much — knows,  but  cannot  do. 
And  yet  we  could  name  certain  modern 
churches  in  London,  for  instance,  to  which 
posterity  may  well  look  back  puzzled. — 
Could  these  exquisitely  pondered  buildings 
have  been  indeed  works  of  the  nineteenth 


152  Essays  from 

century  ?  Were  they  not  the  subtlest 
creations  of  the  age  in  which  Gothic  art 
was  spontaneous  ?  In  truth,  we  have  had 
instances  of  workmen,  who,  through  long, 
large,  devoted  study  of  the  handiwork  of 
the  past,  have  done  the  thing  better,  with 
a  more  fully  enlightened  consciousness, 
with  full  intelligence  of  what  those  early 
workmen  only  guessed  at.  And  some- 
thing like  this  is  true  of  some  of  our  best 
secondary  poetry.  It  is  the  least  that  is 
true  —  the  least  that  can  fairly  be  said  in 
praise  of  the  poetic  work  of  Mr.  Edmund 
Gosse. 

Of  course  there  can  be  no  exact  parallel 
between  arts  so  different  as  architecture 
and  poetic  composition.  But  certainly  in 
the  poetry  of  our  day  also,  though  it  has 
been  in  some  instances  powerfully  initiative 
and  original,  there  is  great  scholarship,  a 
large  comparative  acquaintance  with  the 
poetic  methods  of  earlier  workmen,  and  a 
very  subtle  intelligence  of  their  charm. 
Of  that  fine  scholarship  in  this  matter  there 
is  no  truer  example  than  Mr.  Gosse.    It  is 


the '' Guardian. ''  153 

manifested  especially  in  the  even  finish  of 
his  varied  work,  in  the  equality  of  his  level 
—  a  high  level  —  in  species  of  composition 
so  varied  as  the  three  specimens  which 
follow. 

Far  away,  in  late  spring,  "  by  the  sea  in 
the  south,"  the  swallows  are  still  lingering 
around  "  white  Algiers."  In  Mr.  Gosse's 
"  Return  of  the  Swallows,"  the  northern 
birds  —  lark  and  thrush  —  have  long  been 
calling  to  them  :  — 

"  And  something  awoke  in  the  slumbering  heart 

Of  the  alien  birds  in  their  African  air, 
And  they  paused,  and  alighted,  and  twittered  apart, 

And  met  in  the  broad  white  dreamy  square. 
And  the  sad  slave  woman,  who  lifted  up 
From  the  fountain  her  broad-lipped  earthen  cup. 

Said  to  herself,  with  a  weary  sigh, 

'  To-morrow  the  swallows  will  northward  fly  !  '  " 

Compare  the  following  stanzas,  from  a 
kind  of  palinode,  "  1870-1871,"  years  of 
the  Franco-German  war  and  the  Parisian 
Commune  :  — 

"  The  men  who  sang  that  pain  was  sweet 

Shuddered  to  see  the  mask  of  death 
Storm  by  with  myriad  thundering  feet  ; 


154  Essays  from 

The  sudden  truth  caught  up  our  breath, 
Our  throats  like  pulses  beat. 

"  The  songs  of  pale  emaciate  hours, 
The  fungus-growth  of  years  of  peace, 

Withered  before  us  like  mown  flowers  ; 
We  found  no  pleasure  more  in  these 
When  bullets  fell  in  showers. 

"  For  men  whose  robes  are  dashed  with  blood, 
What  joy  to  dream  of  gorgeous  stairs, 

Stained  with  the  torturing  interlude 

That  soothed  a  Sultan's  midday  prayers, 
In  old  days  harsh  and  rude  ? 

"  For  men  whose  lips  are  blanched  and  white. 
With  aching  wounds  and  torturing  thirst, 

What  charm  in  canvas  shot  with  light, 
And  pale  with  faces  cleft  and  curst, 
Past  life  and  life's  delight  ?  " 

And  then  Mr.  Gosse's  purely  descriptive 
power,  his  aptitude  for  still-life  and  land- 
scape, is  unmistakably  vivid  and  sound. 
Take,  for  an  instance,  this  description  of 
high-northern  summer:  — 

"  The  ice-white  mountains  clustered  all  around  us, 
But  artic  summer  l^lossomed  at  our  feet ; 

The  perfume  of  the  creeping  sallows  found  us, 
The  cranberry-flowers  were  sweet. 


the  ''Guardian'''  155 

"  Below  us  through  the  valley  crept  a  river, 
Cleft  round  an  island  where  the  Lap-men  lay ; 

Its  sluggish  water  dragged  with  slow  endeavour 
The  mountain  snows  away. 

"  There  is  no  night-time  in  the  northern  summer, 
But  golden  shimmer  fills  the  hours  of  sleep, 

And  sunset  fades  not,  till  the  bright  new-comer, 
Red  sunrise,  smites  the  deep. 

"  But  when  the  blue  snow-shadows  grew  intenser 
Across  the  peaks  against  the  golden  sky. 

And  on  the  hills  the  knots  of  deer  grew  denser, 
And  raised  their  tender  cry, 

*'  And      wandered     downward      to      the     Lap-men's 
dwelling, 

We  knew  our  long  sweet  day  was  nearly  spent. 
And  slowly,  with  our  hearts  within  us  swelling, 

Our  homeward  steps  we  bent." 

"Sunshine  before  Sunrise!"  There's  a 
novelty  in  that,  for  poetic  use  at  least,  so 
far  as  we  know,  though  we  remember  one 
fine  paragraph  about  itin"SartorResartus." 
The  grim  poetic  sage  of  Chelsea,  however, 
had  never  seen  what  he  describes  :  not  so 
Mr.Gosse,whoseacquaintance  with  northern 
lands  and  northern  literature  is  special. 
We  have  indeed  picked  out  those  stanzas 


156  Essays  from 

from  a  quiet  personal  record  of  certain 
amorous  hours  of  early  youth  in  that  quaint 
arctic  land,  Mr.  Gosse's  description  of  which, 
like  his  pretty  poem  on  Liibeck,  made  one 
think  that  what  the  accomplished  group  of 
poets  to  which  he  belongs  requires  is,  above 
all,  novelty  of  motive,  of  subject. 

He  takes,  indeed,  the  old  themes,  and 
manages  them  better  than  their  old  masters, 
with  more  delicate  cadences,  more  delicate 
transitions  of  thought, through  longdwelling 
on  earlier  practice.  He  seems  to  possess 
complete  command  of  the  technique  of 
poetry — every  form  of  what  may  be  called 
skill  of  hand  in  it ;  and  what  marks  in  him 
the  final  achievement  of  poetic  scholarship 
is  the  perfect  balance  his  work  presents  of 
so  many  and  varied  effects,  as  regards  both 
matter  and  form.  The  memories  of  a  large 
range  of  poetic  reading  are  blent  into  one 
methodical  music  so  perfectly  that  at  times 
the  notes  seem  almost  simple.  Sounding 
almost  all  the  harmonies  of  the  modern  lyre, 
he  has,  perhaps  as  a  matter  of  course,  some 
of  the  faults   also,  the  "  spasmodic  "  and 


the  "  Guardian^  157 

other  lapses,  which  from  age  to  age,  in 
successive  changes  of  taste,  have  been  the 
"defects"  of  excellent  good  "qualities." 
He  is  certainly  not  the  — 

"  Pathetic  singer,  with  no  strength  to  sing," 

as  he  says  of  the  white-throat  on  the  tulip- 
tree, 

"  Whose  leaves  unfinished  ape  her  faulty  song." 

In  effect,  a  large  compass  of  beautiful 
thought  and  expression,  from  poetry  old 
and  new,  have  become  to  him  matter 
malleable  anew  for  a  further  and  finer 
reach  of  literary  art.  And  with  the  perfect 
grace  of  an  intaglio,  he  shows,  as  in  truth 
the  minute  intaglio  may  do,  the  faculty  of 
structure,  the  logic  of  poetry.  "  The  New 
Endymion  "  is  a  good  instance  of  such 
sustained  power.  Poetic  scholar  !  —  If  we 
must  reserve  the  sacred  name  of  "  poet  "  to 
a  very  small  number,  that  humbler  but 
perhaps  still  rarer  title  is  due  indisputably 
to  Mr.  Gosse.  His  work  is  like  exquisite 
modern  Latin  verse,  into  the  academic 
shape  of  which,  discreet  and  coy,  comes  a 


158  Essays  from 

sincere, deeply  felt  consciousness  of  modern 
life,  of  the  modern  world  as  it  is.  His 
poetry,  according  with  the  best  intellectual 
instincts  of  our  critical  age,is  as  pointed  out 
recently  by  a  clever  writer  in  the  "  Nine- 
teenth Century,"  itself  a  kind  of  exquisite, 
finally  revised  criticism. 

Not  that  he  fails  in  originality  ;  only,  the 
graces,  inborn  certainly,  but  so  carefully 
educated,  strike  one  more.  The  sense  of 
his  originality  comes  to  one  as  but  an  after- 
thought ;  and  certainly  one  sign  of  his 
vocation  is  that  he  has  made  no  conscious 
effort  to  be  original.  In  his  beautiful 
opening  poem  of  the  "White-throat," 
giving  his  book  its  key-note,  he  seems,  in- 
deed, to  accept  that  position,  reasons  on 
and  justifies  it-  Yet  there  is  a  clear  note 
of  originality  (so  it  seems  to  us)  in  the 
peculiar  charm  of  his  strictly  personal 
compositions  ;  and,  generally,  in  such 
touches  as  he  gives  us  of  the  soul,  the  life, 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Far  greater, 
we  think,  than  the  charm  of  poems  strictly 
classic  in  interest,  such  as  the  "  Praise  of 


the  "  Guardian r  159 

Dionysus,"  exquisite  as  that  is,  is  the 
charm  of  those  pieces  in  which,  so  to 
speak,  he  transforms,  by  a  kind  of  colour- 
change,  classic  forms  and  associations  into 
those — say!  of  Thames-side — pieces  which, 
though  in  manner  or  subject  promising  a 
classic  entertainment,  almost  unaware 
bring  you  home. — No  !  after  all,  it  is  not 
imagined  Greece,  dreamy,  antique  Sicily, 
but  the  present  world  about  us,  though 
mistakable  for  a  moment,  delightfully,  for 
the  land,  the  age,  of  Sappho,  of  Theo- 
critus :  — 

"  There  is  no  amaranth,  no  pomegranate  here, 
But  can  your  heart  forget  the  Christmas  rose. 
The  crocuses  and  snowdrops  once  so  dear  ?  " 

Quite  congruously  with  the  placid, 
erudite,  quality  of  his  culture,  although, 
like  other  poets,  he  sings  much  of  youth, 
he  is  often  most  successful  in  the  forecast, 
the  expression,  of  the  humours,  the  con- 
siderations, that  in  truth  are  more  proper 
to  old  age  :  — 

"  When  age  comes  by  and  lays  his  frosty  hands 
So  lightly  on  mine  eyes,  that,  scarce  aware 


1 60  Essays  fro7n 

Of  what  an  endless  weight  of  gloom  they  bear, 
I  pause,  unstirred,  and  wait  for  his  commands. 
When   time    has    bound    these    limbs   of    mine   with 
bands, 
And  hushed  mine  ears,  and  silvered  all  my  hair, 
May  sorrow  come  not,  nor  a  vain  despair 
Trouble  my  soul  that  meekly  girdled  stands. 

"  As  silent  rivers  into  silent  lakes, 

Through  hush  of  reeds  that  not  a  murmur  breaks, 

Wind,  mindful  of  the  poppies  whence  they  came. 
So  may  my  life,  and  calmly  burn  away. 
As  ceases  in  a  lamp  at  break  of  day 

The  flagrant  remnant  of  memorial  flame." 

Euthanasia!  — Yet  Mr.  Gosse,with  all  his 
accomplishment,  is  still  a  young  man.  His 
youthful  confidence  in  the  perpetuity  of 
poetry,  of  the  poetical  interests  in  life, 
creed-less  as  he  may  otherwise  seem  to  be, 
is,  we  think,  a  token,  though  certainly  an 
unconscious  token,  of  the  spontaneous 
originality  of  his  muse.  For  a  writer  of 
his  peculiar  philosophic  tenets,  at  all 
events,  the  world  itself,  in  truth,  must  seem 
irretrievably  old  or  even  decadent. 

Old,  decadent,  indeed,  it  would  seem 
with  Mr.  Gosse  to  be  also  returning  to  the 


the  "  Guardian''  1 6 1 

thoughts,  the  fears,  the  consolations,  of  its 
youth  in  Greece,  in  Italy  :  — 

"  Nor  seems  it  strange  indeed 

To  hold  the  happy  creed 
That  all  fair  things  that  bloom  and  die 
Have  conscious  life  as  well  as  I. 

"  Then  let  me  joy  to  be 

Alive  with  bird  and  tree, 
And  have  no  haughtier  aim  than  this, 
To  be  a  partner  in  their  bliss." 

Convinced,eloquent, — again  andagain  the 
notes  of  Epicurean  philosophy  fall  almost 
unconsciously  from  his  lips.  With  poetry 
at  hand,  he  appears  to  feel  no  misgivings. 
A  large  faith  he  might  seem  to  have  in 
what  is  called  "  natural  optimism,"  the 
beauty  and  benignity  of  nature,  if  let  alone, 
in  her  mechanical  round  of  changes  with 
man  and  beast  and  flower.  Her  method, 
however,certainly  involves  forgetfulness  for 
the  individual  ;  and  to  this,  to  the  prospect 
of  oblivion,  poetry,  too,  may  help  to  brace 
us,  if,  unlike  so  genial  and  cheerful  a  poet 
as  Mr.  Gosse,  we  need  bracing  thereto  :  — 
M 


1 62  Essays  from 

"  Now,  giant-like,  the  tall  young  ploughmen  go 

Between  me  and  the  sunset,  footing  slow; 
My  spirit,  as  an  uninvited  guest, 
Goes  with  them,  wondering  what  desire,  what  aim. 
May  stir  their  hearts  and  mine  with  common  flame, 

Or,  thoughtless,  do  their  hands  suffice  their  soul  ? 
I  know  not,  care  not,  for  I  deem  no  shame 
To  hold  men,  flowers,  and  trees  and  stars  the  same, 
Myself,  as  these,  one  atom  in  the  whole." 

That  is  from  one  of  those  half-Greek,  half- 
English  idylls,  reminding  one  of  Frederick 
Walker's  "  Ploughman,"  of  Mason's  "Even- 
ing Hymn,"  in  which  Mr.  Gosse  is  at  his 
best.  A  favourite  motive,  he  has  treated 
it  even  more  melodiously  in  "  Lying  in  the 
Grass  : " — 

"  I  do  not  hunger  for  a  well-stored  mind, 
I  only  wish  to  live  my  life,  and  find 
My  heart  in  unison  with  all  mankind. 

"  My  life  is  like  the  single  dewy  star 

That  trembles  on  the  horizon's  primrose-bar, — 

A  microcosm  where  all  things  living  are. 

"  And  if,  among  the  noiseless  grasses.  Death 
Should  come  behind  and  take  away  my  breath, 
I  should  not  rise  as  one  who  sorroweth  ; 

"  For  I  should  pass,  but  all  the  world  would  be 

Full  of  desire  and  young  delight  and  glee, 

And  why  should  men  be  sad  through  loss  of  me  ? 


the  "  Guardian''  163 

"  The  light  is  flying;  in  the  silver-blue 

The   young   moon   shines   from  her  bright  window 

through : 
The  mowers  are  all  gone,  and  I  go  too." 

A  vein  of  thought  as  modern  as  it  is  old  ! 
More  not  less  depressing,  certainly,  to 
our  over-meditative,  susceptible,  nervous, 
modern  age,  than  to  that  antiquity  which 
was  indeed  the  genial  youth  of  the  world, 
but,  sweetly  attuned  by  his  skill  of  touch, 
it  is  the  sum  of  what  Mr.  Gosse  has  to  tell 
us  of  the  experience  of  life.  Oris  it,  after 
all,  to  quote  him  once  more,  that  beyond 
those  ever-recurring  pagan  misgivings, 
those  pale  pagan  consolations,  our  genera- 
tion feels  yet  cannot  adequately  express — 

"  The  passion  and  the  stress 
Of  thoughts  too  tender  and  too  sad  to  be 
Enshrined  in  any  melody  she  knows  "  ? 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

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